Signed-off-by

Michael Adam obnox at samba.org
Wed May 22 07:40:30 MDT 2013


On 2013-05-22 at 07:52 -0400, Simo wrote:
> On 05/22/2013 01:11 AM, Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> >On Tue, 2013-05-21 at 21:51 -0700, Richard Sharpe wrote:
> >>It looks OK. However, there is no signed-off-by line.
> >
> >https://www.samba.org/samba/devel/copyright-policy.html describes the
> >meaning of Signed-off-by for Samba, but as I own my copyright personally
> >and so have not mailed in that statement (including LGPL permission), it
> >does not apply to me.
> >
> >In consideration of the above, I choose not to add this line to avoid
> >any further confusion as to the licence or circumstances under which I
> >provide my code.
> 
> Andrew, you keep repeating this but it makes no sense.
> 
> Signed-off-by means: *I fundamentally contributed in making this
> patch and I am signing it to affirm that*.
> It doesn't say anything about who owns the copyright.
> 
> Please add signed-off-by lines like everybody else does.

Dear Andrew,

I support Simo's request here - and extend this to every
contributor, especially team member who does not use
"Signed-off-by".

Let me extend the explanation:

The section you cited above is NOT the explanation of the meaning
of "signed-off-by" for samba, it is only our application of the general
rule for signed-off-by tag to external, corporate contributors
who may have an issue with personal copyright.

The "Certificate of Origin" along with signed-off-by tags in
commits is a prerequisite for accepting patches that contain corporate
copyright. It does not imply corporate copyright though!
This is simply the wrong direction of implication...

On the contrary: The signed-off-by tag is desired also
for every individually contributed and personally copyrighted
patch.

Here is what we have on the Wiki, which IS our general
explanation:

https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/CodeReview#commit_message_tags

  The Author(s) of a patch should add their signature to the
  commit message by adding a "Signed-off-by: " tag.
  This tag indicates that the the person it lists was involved
  in the creation of the patch, that it is fine with the state
  of the patch and submits it under the license(s) of the
  affected files.

This basically stems from the Linux Kernel:

https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/SubmittingPatches

  The sign-off is a simple line at the end of the explanation for
  the patch, which certifies that you wrote it or otherwise have
  the right to pass it on as a open-source patch.

I hope this makes it some clearer.
I think this is very important.

If this would help, I can help in getting the web site and wiki
more precise.

Cheers - Michael
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