Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v5] Xen PV Device

[Stefano Stabellini]

On Mon, 8 Jul 2013, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> Stefano Stabellini <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > On Mon, 8 Jul 2013, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> >> Andreas Färber <address@hidden> writes:
> >> 
> >> Right, it goes:
> >> 
> >> 1) Acked-by:
> >> 
> >> I haven't reviewed the code in detail but the general idea seems sane.
> >> 
> >> 2) Reviewed-by:
> >> 
> >> The general idea seems sane, and I have done a thorough review of the
> >> patch in question.
> >> 
> >> 3) Signed-off-by:
> >> 
> >> All of the above, plus I have ensured that the code is of good quality,
> >> does not break things, and the other things expected of a maintainer.
> >> This is considered to be a legally binding statement too based on the
> >> DCO so be aware of that and ensure you have the right approval to make
> >> such a statement.
> >
> > I don't think that is a good idea to mix up DCO with reviewing
> > patches.
> 
> It's all a question of patch origin and accounting.  DCO is just one
> part of it.
> 
> > In fact in the Linux community I think that it's pretty clear that
> > Signed-off-by doesn't mean anything other than "at least a portion of
> > the changes have been done by me and I am the Copyright owner of
> > them".
> 
> No, it also means: "I can certify that the person who provided the patch
> to me has the appropriate rights to submit the patch."  See section (c)
> of the DCO.
>
> It's about establishing a chain of custody.  I'm not making any kind of
> judgement when I merge a pull request from you because you've told me
> (by adding your Signed-off-by) that all of the code is of appropriate
> origin.

Right, that's a much better way of saying it than what I wrote :)


> Of course, if you are not also saying that the code is of high quality
> and does what it's described too, I don't really care about the code
> origin in the first place :-)  So this is an important part of it too.

I guess that's an implicit part of the agreement between you and the
maintainers.
I was just saying that given that Signed-off-by has already a clearly
defined meaning related to DCO, I don't think is a good idea to overload
it with other meanings related to the quality of the code.