Re: [PATCH glep] glep-0076: Remove kernel DCO use provision

Michał Górny <[email protected]> Sat, 27 Jun 2026 16:27:55 +0200

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.gentoo.devel
Organization	Gentoo
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

On Mon, 2026-06-22 at 21:06 +0200, Ulrich Müller wrote:
> > > > > > On Mon, 22 Jun 2026, Michał Górny wrote:
> 
> > To be honest, I was thinking how to fit SC into all of this.  In the
> > end, what we want people to do is to follow the SC.  What I really
> > dislike about the current system is that we're doing one sign-off for
> > one policy, and then adding GitHub pull request templates to have them
> > sign off on another policy.
> 
> > Admittedly, this changes very little, so perhaps it makes no sense.  I
> > honestly doubt most of the contributors even realize what they're
> > signing off on -- given that --signoff is pretty much a standard for
> > contributing to many projects these days.
> 
> Most of the time, a Signed-off-by line is attached to something very
> similar to the Linux DCO; our GCO is pretty similar to it (in fact, it's
> laxer because of the provision for license files).
> 
> I'd rather not attach additional (stricter) meanings to it that are only
> indirectly related to copyright law. It might even weaken our position,
> because contributors will have the excuse that they inadvertently signed
> off on something they didn't expect.
> 
> So, it's well into territory where I would feel uneasy without
> consulting a lawyer.
> 

Okay.  All things considered, how about we consider the opposite.  Given
that:

1. GCO is more lax than DCO, and therefore anything committed under the
DCO is also valid under the GCO, and

2. We have overloaded the meaning of Signed-off-by, so you can't really
tell if someone actually agreed to GCO or made a signoff assuming DCO,

how about we drop the "(DCO-1.1)" tag, and just have Signed-off-by mean
*either* GCO or DCO?

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

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