Re: [PATCH v4] watchdog: Add Broadcom BCM2835 watchdog timer driver

[Stephen Warren <swarren@wwwdotorg.org>]

On 03/27/2013 10:40 AM, Lubomir Rintel wrote:
> This adds a driver for watchdog timer hardware present on Broadcom BCM2835 SoC,
> used in Raspberry Pi and Roku 2 devices.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Lubomir Rintel <lkundrak@v3.sk>
> Signed-off-by: Dom Cobley <popcornmix@gmail.com>

Those two s-o-b lines should be swapped, since if Dom did sign off on
any part of this patch, he did it before you did.

That said...

I wonder if it's actually appropriate to include Dom's s-o-b here, since
I don't think he really wrote this patch itself. I think you mentioned
that you hadn't use much of the downstream driver except for some defines?

To be clear, I mentioned the existence of the S-o-b line downstream
simply to demonstrate that the commits you were getting information from
had correctly followed the process described in
Documentation/SubmittingPatches, and so it was OK to use that
information while creating a GPL'd driver.

So there are a couple of ways that this patch could have been created:

1) You took the downstream commit itself, cherry-picked it into the
upstream kernel, modified it to suit upstream, and then submitted that.
The modifications might be extensive, such as renaming the file,
removing parts of the code that the upstream watchdog core now handles,
adding some new features, fixing bugs, cleanup, etc.; whatever is needed
to upstream the patch.

In this case, I believe it would be appropriate to maintain any S-o-b
lines from the original downstream commit, and add yours. But, I believe
you should also (a) maintain the git author field from the original
downstream commit (b) include a list of the changes you made to the
patch in the commit description, so you can be blamed for them rather
than the original author:-)

2) You read the downstream commit for information, but created a
completely new driver for the upstream kernel, using the downstream
driver just as a reference. In this case, I believe it's fine for the
git author field to be you, and for the only s-o-b line present to be
yours, since you really did write the patch from scratch. However, you
should credit the downstream work in the (c) header and/or commit
description.

This current patch sees to be a slight hybrid of both approaches (you're
listed as the git author, but have included Dom's s-o-b line on a patch
I don't think he created, and wasn't directly derived from one he created).

I'm not sure if I'm being too picky. I guess I'll leave it up to Wim Van
Sebroeck, since he's the watchdog maintainer and would be the person who
applies this patch.