From: Linus Torvalds Date: Fri, 27 May 2005 22:06:42 GMT Subject: Re: ALSA official git repository Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20050527135124.0d98c33e.akpm@osdl.org> On Fri, 27 May 2005, Andrew Morton wrote: > > Yes, I'll occasionally do patches which were written by "A" as: > > From: A > ... > Signed-off-by: B > > And that comes through email as: > > > ... > From: > ... > From: A > ... > Signed-off-by: B > > > which means that the algorithm for identifying the author is "the final > From:". No, the algorithm is: - the email author, _or_ if there is one, the top "From:" in the body. And the rule is that you never remove (or add to) an existing From:, since the author doesn't change from being passed around. Put another way: authorship is very different from sign-off. The sign-off gets stacked, the authorship is constant, and thus the rules are different. Also, authorship is more important than sign-off-ship, so authorship goes at the top, while sign-offs go at the bottom. > I guess the bug here is the use of From: to identify the primary author, > because transporting the patch via email adds ambiguity. No it doesn't, the email "from" just ends up being the "default" if no explicit authorship is noted. > Maybe we should introduce "^Author:"? It would still have the same rules, so it wouldn't change anything but the tag, so I don't think there is any real advantage to it. Linus