On Mon, Jan 10, 2022 at 04:55:01PM +0100, Paolo Bonzini wrote: > So this means that "the author must be the first SoB" is not an absolute > rule. In the case of this patch we had: > > From: Jing Liu <jing2.liu@xxxxxxxxx> > ... > Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Signed-off-by: Jing Liu <jing2.liu@xxxxxxxxx> > Signed-off-by: Yang Zhong <yang.zhong@xxxxxxxxx> Looking at Kevin's explanation, that should be: Signed-off-by: Jing Liu <jing2.liu@xxxxxxxxx> # author Signed-off-by: Yang Zhong <yang.zhong@xxxxxxxxx> # v1 submitter Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> # handler/reviewer Signed-off-by: Jing Liu <jing2.liu@xxxxxxxxx> # v2-v3 submitter Signed-off-by: Yang Zhong <yang.zhong@xxxxxxxxx> # v4-v5 submitter > and the possibilities could be: > > 1) have two SoB lines for Jing (before and after Thomas) > > 2) add a Co-developed-by for Thomas as the first line If Thomas would prefer. But then it becomes: Signed-off-by: Jing Liu <jing2.liu@xxxxxxxxx> # author Signed-off-by: Yang Zhong <yang.zhong@xxxxxxxxx> # v1 submitter Co-developed-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> # co-author Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> # handler/reviewer Signed-off-by: Jing Liu <jing2.liu@xxxxxxxxx> # v2-v3 submitter Signed-off-by: Yang Zhong <yang.zhong@xxxxxxxxx> # v4-v5 submitter and that means, Thomas worked on that patch *after* Yang submitted v1. Which is the exact chronological order, as Kevin writes. > 3) do exactly what the gang did ("remain practical and do only an SOB > chain") Yes, but not change the SOB order. Because if you do that, then it doesn't state what the exact path was the patch took and how it ended up upstream. And due to past fun stories with SCO, we want to track exactly how a patch ended up upstream. And I think this is the most important aspect of those SOB chains. IMNSVHO. -- Regards/Gruss, Boris. https://people.kernel.org/tglx/notes-about-netiquette