Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 24 Aug 2023 01:19:15 +0200 | Subject | Re: [RFC PATCH 1/1] docs: submitting-patches: Add Sponsored-by tag to give credits to who sponsored the patch | From | Giulio Benetti <> |
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Hello Geert, All,
On 21/08/23 09:40, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote: > Hi Giulio, > > On Sun, Aug 20, 2023 at 2:35 AM Giulio Benetti > <giulio.benetti@benettiengineering.com> wrote: >> On 18/08/23 01:23, Laurent Pinchart wrote: >>> On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 12:09:57AM +0200, Giulio Benetti wrote: >>>> Sometimes it happens that a Company or a Physical Person sponsors the >>>> creation and/or the upstreaming process of a patch, but at the moment >>>> there is no way to give credits to it. There are some commit that include >>>> a sort of tag "Sponsored by" without the dash to avoid >>>> scripts/checkpatch.pl to complain but a real standard has not been defined. >>>> With this patch let's try to define a method to give credits consistently >>>> including an acknowledge from the sponsor. The goal is to improve >>>> contributions from companies or physical persons that this way should gain >>>> visibility in Linux kernel and so they should be more prone to let the >>>> work done for them for to be upstreamed. >>> >>> Just adding one data point here, without judging on the merits of this >>> proposal. I've been requested previously by customers to increase their >>> visibility in the kernel development statistics, and the way we found to >>> do so was to sign-off patches with >>> >>> Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart+customer@ideasonboard.com> >>> >>> (where "customer" is to be replaced with the customer name). >> >> this approach works good for the developer because of the +customer >> mailbox capability but in term of appeal for the final customer I've >> been told(by the customer) he would really like more the "Sponsored-by:" >> way. To tell the truth while I was looking for an existing alternative >> I've found the commits with "Sponsored by:" pseudo-tag that look cooler. >> >> This is my taste of course and the taste of one of my customers, but >> to me it's like having a brand shown: >> Sponsored-by: Sponsoring Company >> vs: >> Signed-off-by: Giulio Benetti >> <giulio.benetti+sponsor.company@benettiengineering.com> > > Personally, I would respond "I'm sorry, but the only advertising > space we offer are Copyright headers (for employees) and > "user+customer@..." or "name (customer) user@..." (for contractors).
This is a good answer. So these are the 2 possible ways to give credits to sponsors.
Does it make sense if I send a patch describing exactly this? This is because my finding was only "Sponsored by" that looked good to me. So I can avoid other possible pain for the future.
> And this is a separate tag, so it's harder for the analysis tools > (whose output your customers must be interested in, too?) to > match the tag to the actual Author/Reviewer/...
Right
>> If I am the customer I'd really prefer the first option. > > You are aware this will cause lots of work for the customer, too? > (See below).
[ SNIP ]
>>>> +In both cases, to prevent fake credits, either the company or the person should >>>> +send an Acked-by tag placed right under Sponsored-by tag using the same form >>>> +described above. So for example if the patch contains:: >>>> + >>>> + <changelog> >>>> + >>>> + Sponsored-by: Company Name <mail@companyname.com> >>>> + Signed-off-by: Developer Name <developer.name@developername.com> >>>> + >>>> +The result including the answer from the sponsor must be:: >>>> + >>>> + <changelog> >>>> + >>>> + Sponsored-by: Company Name <mail@companyname.com> >>>> + Acked-by: Company Name <mail@companyname.com> >>>> + Signed-off-by: Developer Name <developer.name@developername.com> >>>> + >>>> +This way the sponsor agrees to the usage of this tag using its name. > > This is also causing more work for maintainers: now they have to check > if any Sponsored-by tags are present, and track if there is a response > with a matching Acked-by tag... > > And obviously they should postpone applying the patch until a > confirmation response is sent... which may never happen...
Yes it came into my mind and I wanted to rely only on DCO dropping the part of acked-by tag. But there are too many cons for Sponsored-by approach.
So I will go for one of the 2 ways I've been pointed.
Thank you Best regards -- Giulio Benetti CEO&CTO@Benetti Engineering sas
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