On Thu, Dec 24 2020, Felipe Contreras wrote: > Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote: >> On Wed, Dec 23 2020, Felipe Contreras wrote: >> >> > 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/] > > Yes, but the DCO requires (d): > > d. I understand and agree that this project and the contribution are > public and that a record of the contribution (including all personal > information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is maintained > indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with this project or > the open source license(s) involved. > > We can narrow down the part I'm talking about: > > d. I *agree* that a record of the contribution is maintained > indefinitely. > > I don't agree with that. I don't understand you here. You don't agree that we retain Signed-off-by lines indefinitely, or just in the case of amended patches? > Moreover, the relevant definition of "sign off" in English in my opinion > is [1]: > > to approve or acknowledge something by or as if by a signature (sign > off on a memo) > > If I didn't put my "signature" in a commit, then it's not signed off by > me. I think this use of 'signed off" makes perfect sense if you interpret the sign-off to mean "I signed off on the copyright eligibility of this work for inclusion" which is what I think it means. Not "I signed off on my subjective approval of this patch & what it's for etc.", which seems to be closer to your interpretation. >> 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. > > I don't think so. > > Even if you disregard clause (d) of the DCO, in English you didn't "sign > off" on that particular version of the patch. [...addressed below...] >> "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. > > Yes, you just have to make the record straight; do your changes in a > separate commit without my "sign off". We like to maintain "make test" passing for every commit, and sometimes we have patches on the ML with a SOB that don't even compile yet, let alone pass tests, because they were provided by their authors as "maybe try this" or other near-pseudocode. We also like to optimize patch order/size/splits/etc. for the benefit of reviewers. Sometimes someone might send a patch with a SOB that's better squashed into another one, or refactored into N commits spread across a series etc. >> E.g. I'm sure that arms contractors, totalitarian regimes etc. or other >> entities some might disapprove of are using git in some way. > > Yes, and you can modify my patch and keep my s-o-b, I'm not going to sue > you. > > I just don't think that's right. > >> 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. > > Sure, so if you need to keep a paper trail about the copyright of the > code, why would you risk that simply because the author didn't agree on > the further changes. > > Just do them on a separate commit. Problem solved. I don't understand how the copyright paper trail is at risk just because we combine N patches into one. The important part is that we have a declaration that the sum of the work (and whatever it's derived from) is properly licensed, that the authors had the right to license it for inclusion etc.
