3 To improve tracking of who did what, especially with patches that can
4 percolate to their final resting place in the kernel through several
5 layers of maintainers, we've introduced a "sign-off" procedure on
6 patches that are being emailed around.
8 The sign-off is a simple line at the end of the explanation for the
9 patch, which certifies that you wrote it or otherwise have the right to
10 pass it on as a open-source patch. The rules are pretty simple: if you
11 can certify the below:
13 Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.0
15 By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:
17 (a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I
18 have the right to submit it under the open source license
19 indicated in the file; or
21 (b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best
22 of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source
23 license and I have the right under that license to submit that
24 work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part
25 by me, under the same open source license (unless I am
26 permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated
29 (c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other
30 person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified
33 then you just add a line saying
35 Signed-off-by: Random J Developer <random@developer.org>
37 Some people also put extra tags at the end. They'll just be ignored for
38 now, but you can do this to mark internal company procedures or just
39 point out some special detail about the sign-off.