Re: [Qemu-devel] Add Markus Armbrusters code for Broadcom Perhiperals for ARM.

[Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>]

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On 05/17/2017 04:25 PM, John Bradley wrote:
> Well unfortunately Eric. I don't understand your "top posted" slang.

To learn what top-posting is:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+is+top-posting

and why we don't like it on technical lists:
http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html

Or more humorously:

A: Yes.
> >Q: Are you sure?
>> >>A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
>>> >>>Q: Why is top posting frowned upon?

> 
> As for his "intent", it is quite irrelevant as I have gone over the code line by line and what every he intended to do, he has succeed, as far as I can tell , in matching you standards, to such an extent that I am happy that 

You are correct that the GPL gives us legal rights to use Andrew's code
without his permission.  And yes, YOU can fork qemu, and take whatever
GPL patches you want without attribution, and you are probably still
just fine legally (as long as you still abide by the GPL in that you
distribute sources to anyone that has your binary).

But our project rules do not allow us to live by just GPL (in part,
because the license of qemu is sometimes tricky to determine due to a
mix of GPLv2-only code and non-GPL code, even though most new code is
GPLv2+).  Also, if we ever had a reason to change license (supposing it
is even possible, although it might require ripping out or
reimplementing portions of the code base), having S-o-b means that we
cannot be accused of applying a license that someone did not agree to.

Therefore, it is easier, pragmatically, even if not legally necessary,
to enforce proper chain of authorship by getting Signed-off-by: tags on
ALL patches, especially where a patch asserts a copyright owner, insofar
as the original copyright owner is still alive and able to assent to the
action.  It is not just about legalities, it is also about risk-avoidance.

It may sound like we are being hard-nosed (and so be it), but there's a
reason that we list proper Signed-off-by: rules as our number 1 item on
the SubmitAPatch page.
http://wiki.qemu.org/Contribute/SubmitAPatch

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3266
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org


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