Re: Nobody is THE one making contribution
- From
Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
- Date
- Dec 24, 2020, 02:01 UTC
- Message-ID
- <87r1ngufmf.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com>
- In-Reply-To
- <5fe36790793ae_2354120839@natae.notmuch>
On Wed, Dec 23 2020, Felipe Contreras wrote:
Show 7 quoted lines
> When I express my dissenting opinion I'm not saying nobody should write > a patch on top of mine. Of course they can. Anybody can take my code and > do whatever they want with it (as long as they don't violate the license > of the project). > > What they cannot do is add my Signed-off-by line to code I don't agree > with.
I don't think that's what Signed-off-by means, per SubmittingPatches:
To improve tracking of who did what, we ask you to certify that you
wrote the patch or have the right to pass it on under the same
license as ours, by "signing off" your patch[...under the DCO:
https://developercertificate.org/]So I find this rather unlikely, but let's say I author a patch for git.git and send it to this ML with a Signed-off-by.
If someone else then takes that patch and changes it in a way that I vehemently disagree with and gets Junio to accept it into git.git in its altered form, that altered patch should still carry my Signed-off-by, as well as that of whoever altered it.
Because it's a trailer for maintaining the licensing paper trail. It doesn't mean "Ævar thinks this patch as it stands is a good idea"[1].
"No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor" is an integral part of free software & open source. In our case it means that when you contribute code under our COPYING terms someone else might use in a way you don't approve of.
E.g. I'm sure that arms contractors, totalitarian regimes etc. or other entities some might disapprove of are using git in some way.
That non-restriction on fields of endeavor also extends to individual patches licensed under a free software license & the necessity to maintain a paper trail about who their authors are and if they certified them under the DCO.
1. As an aside, I haven't needed involvement from others to later realize that an integrated patch of mine with my SOB maybe wasn't such a good idea after all :)