Re: [PATCH v4] docs: clarify rules wrt tagging other people

[Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>]

Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info> writes:

> Point out that explicit permission is usually needed to tag other people
> in changes, but mention that implicit permission can be sufficient in
> certain cases. This fixes slight inconsistencies between Reported-by:
> and Suggested-by: and makes the usage more intuitive.
>
> While at it, explicitly mention the dangers of our bugzilla instance, as
> it makes it easy to forget that email addresses visible there are only
> shown to logged-in users.
>
> The latter is not a theoretical issue, as one maintainer mentioned that
> his employer received a EU GDPR (general data protection regulation)
> complaint after exposing a email address used in bugzilla through a tag
> in a patch description.
>
> Cc: Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>
> Cc: Simona Vetter <simona.vetter@ffwll.ch>
> Cc: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@kernel.org>
> Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
> Reviewed-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@kernel.org>
> Reviewed-by: Shuah Khan <skhan@linuxfoundation.org>
> Signed-off-by: Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>
> ---
>
> Jonathan, what do you think of this? I felt somewhat unsure about this a
> few weeks ago, but I guess I was overly careful. If you think this
> change is fine and shouldn't cause any trouble for anyone, feel free to
> merge this. And if not, please speak up.


I have a couple of thoughts, neither of which is sufficient for me to
oppose the change if there is consensus for it:

- You're saying that people need to grep email addresses out of the git
  history before crediting them in a tag; that's not a step we have
  required of people before and seems like a bit much..?

- It would be awfully nice if we could provide this advice in exactly
  one place in the document.  This is one of our most important docs,
  and it is far too long to expect new contributors to read through and
  absorb.  Avoiding making it longer and more repetitive would be
  better, if we can.

- I wonder if it would make sense to say that, if an implicit-permission
  tag has been added, the person named in it should get at least one
  copy of the change before it is merged?

OK, three thoughts, you know what they say about off-by-one errors :)

Thanks,

jon