IANAL, this wouldn't be legal advice even if I was one, yadda, yadda, here goes anyway:
Eric Blake <ebl...@redhat.com> writes: > On 05/17/2017 04:25 PM, John Bradley wrote: >> Well unfortunately Eric. I don't understand your "top posted" slang. > > To learn what top-posting is: > http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+is+top-posting > > and why we don't like it on technical lists: > http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html > > Or more humorously: Seconded. > A: Yes. >> >Q: Are you sure? >>> >>A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. >>>> >>>Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? > >> >> As for his "intent", it is quite irrelevant as I have gone over the code >> line by line and what every he intended to do, he has succeed, as far as I >> can tell , in matching you standards, to such an extent that I am happy that > > You are correct that the GPL gives us legal rights to use Andrew's code > without his permission. And yes, YOU can fork qemu, and take whatever > GPL patches you want without attribution, and you are probably still > just fine legally (as long as you still abide by the GPL in that you > distribute sources to anyone that has your binary). > > But our project rules do not allow us to live by just GPL (in part, > because the license of qemu is sometimes tricky to determine due to a > mix of GPLv2-only code and non-GPL code, even though most new code is > GPLv2+). Also, if we ever had a reason to change license (supposing it > is even possible, although it might require ripping out or > reimplementing portions of the code base), having S-o-b means that we > cannot be accused of applying a license that someone did not agree to. > > Therefore, it is easier, pragmatically, even if not legally necessary, > to enforce proper chain of authorship by getting Signed-off-by: tags on > ALL patches, especially where a patch asserts a copyright owner, insofar > as the original copyright owner is still alive and able to assent to the > action. It is not just about legalities, it is also about risk-avoidance. > > It may sound like we are being hard-nosed (and so be it), but there's a > reason that we list proper Signed-off-by: rules as our number 1 item on > the SubmitAPatch page. > http://wiki.qemu.org/Contribute/SubmitAPatch Yes, we require patch submitters to provide their Signed-off-by. We encourage documenting a patch's provenance in full by having every author provide their S-o-b, whenever practical. But we don't require it. The core purpose of the S-o-b is "to improve tracking of who did what" by making patch authors formally certify that they "wrote it or otherwise have the right to pass it on as a open-source patch"[2]. Note "improve" and "have the right to pass it on". One of the (many) reasons we're making software free is to help our neighbor[1] by letting him use our creation on a quid pro quo basis. Always requiring all author's S-o-b could make incorporating otherwise free code impractical, and thus would conflict with this mission. When obtaining an S-o-b is impractical, documenting provenance in other ways has to do. John wrote upthread: Andrew Baumann has and others have release the code under GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2), the same as QEMU that allows me to added it to QEMU as it is under the same license, by signing it off this is what I am certifying. I agree with the reasoning "if free software compatible with the GPLv2, then I can incorporate it into QEMU as long as I certify by signing off". John, thank you for your contribution to QEMU. I'm sorry your patch got side-tracked into this non-technical swamp, and hope you understand why we're rather careful when it comes to protecting the freedom of our software. I futher hope that we can put than behind us (along with top-posting *grin*), and move on to the fun part. [1] See "The four essential freedoms" https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html [2] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/plain/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
