Re: kernel.org status: establishing a PGP web of trust

Arnaud Lacombe
2011-10-06T00:23:52Z

Hi,

On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 7:55 PM, Greg KH <gregkh@suse.de> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 05, 2011 at 04:36:50PM -0400, Arnaud Lacombe wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 4:19 PM, Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> wrote:
>> > On Wed, Oct 05, 2011 at 04:00:39PM -0400, Arnaud Lacombe wrote:
>> >> Hi,
>> >>
>> >> On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 6:39 PM, Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> wrote:
>> >>...
>> >> > Each time a patch goes through him into the kernel, he certifies that
>> >> > his real name is Andrew Morton.
>> >> >
>> >> > If that would not be his real name, it would make him somewhere between
>> >> > completely untrustable and punishable at court.
>> >> >
>> >> Under which jurisdiction ? Under which law ?
>> >>
>> >> IANAL, but US copyright law does recognize the use of pseudonym for
>> >> copyrighted work[0], without requirements to disclose one's legal
>> >> name.
>> >
>> > I am not talking about copyright law.
>> >
>> > When you add a Signed-off-by: to a patch you have to use your real name
>> > (see Documentation/SubmittingPatches for details).
>> >
>> > If violating that would be considered fraud or some other crime in some
>> > jurisdictions is likely a non-trivial question.
>> >
>> One might still question the legality/constitutionality of such a
>> statement. AFAIK, Greg KH, author of the sentence (in af45f32d25c) is
>> not a lawyer.
>
> How do you not know that such a sentance was not vetted by a lawyer?  :)
>
I assume the worst case, unless given documents proving otherwise. The
commit message is not particularly verbose.

>> Have the DCO clauses been legally validated ?
>
> Lawyers were involved in it.  What do you mean by "validated"?
>
I would assume that to involve a court ruling, but still, I'd assume
it would need to be done by an international jurisdiction, which
AFAIK, do not exist.

I'm strongly using the conditional here as IANAL.

- Arnaud