Re: [PATCH/RFC] Developer's Certificate of Origin: default to COPYING

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Sep 12, 2013, 22:44 UTC
Message-ID: <CA+55aFyQZ8EiOg+CZy-KMaX0Hnkdmvq1+8b9p6uuMuHAUzYaAg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqy571n05d.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>

On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 3:30 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> Linus, this is not limited to us, so I am bothering you; sorry about
> that.
>
> My instinct tells me that some competent lawyers at linux-foundation
> helped you with the wording of DCO, and we amateurs shouldn't be
> mucking with the text like this patch does at all, but just in case
> you might find it interesting...

There were lawyers involved, yes.

I'm not sure there is any actual confusion, because the fact is, lawyers aren't robots or programmers, and they have the human qualities of understanding implications. So I'm actually inclined to not change legal text unless a lawyer actually tells me that it's needed.

Plus even if this change was needed, why would anybody point to "COPYING". It's much better to just say "the copyright license of the file", knowing that different projects have different rules about this all, and some projects mix files from different sources, where parts of the tree may be under different licenses that may be explained elsewhere..

            Linus