Re: Nobody is THE one making contribution

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Dec 24, 2020, 22:57 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqtusa24oa.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <5fe4b33dbc028_19c920834@natae.notmuch>

Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

>> Not "I signed off on my subjective approval of this patch & what it's
>> for etc.", which seems to be closer to your interpretation.
>
> Why does it have to be only one meaning?
>
> Junio doesn't sign off on a patch that he doesn't think is good.
> Same happens with all the lieutenants of Linux.

I know some people try to indicate that a patch is not ready for inclusion as-is by omitting sign-off. That way, it would not be enough for the maintainer to pick it up and add his or her own sign-off---the maintainer has to go back to the author and ask it to be signed off (which happens).

But I try not to use the lack of sign-off on my patches to mean anything, because the technique does not work for me. A patch I sent without my sign-off may later turn out to be worth keeping, and when I run "git am -s" on it, I'd have a full sign-off chain anyway. There is no "going back to the author and ask" necessary.

In any case, I am not sure what you are trying to achieve by mentioning the cases where patches are not signed-off.

The reason why some patches do not carry sign-off might be because the sender does not wish to certify and that's OK. But if you are arguing that when you write "Signed-off-by:" your sign-off can mean something other than what DCO says it means, what those people who sometimes do not sign-off their work do would not be useful at all to support your claim, I would have to say. You need to find other people's signed-off patch when they did not mean to certify them under DCO, if "it does not have to be only one meaning" is what you want to support.