Re: [PATCH] MAINTAINERS: Clarify check-in requirements for mixed-author patches

[Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx>]

On 08.12.2022 11:49, George Dunlap wrote:
> From: George Dunlap <george.dunlap@xxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> There was a question raised recently about the requriements for
> checking in a patch which was originally written by one maintainer,
> then picked up and modified by a second maintainer, and which they now both
> agree should be checked in.
> 
> It was proposed that in that case, the following set of tags would suffice:
> 
>    Signed-off-by: First Author <...>
>    Signed-off-by: Second Author <...>
>    Reviewed-by: First Author <...>
> 
> The rationale was as follows:
> 
> 1. The patch will be a mix of code, whose copyright is owned by the
> various authors (or the companies they work for).  It's important to
> keep this information around in the event, for instance, of a license
> change or something else requiring knowledge of the copyright owner.
> 
> 2. The Signed-off-by of the Second Author approves not only their own
> code, but First Author's code;

The wording in ./MAINTAINERS looks good to me, so it may be benign that
here a perhaps relevant (in the course of development) aspect is not
expressed correctly: Second Author may have fixed a bug in the original
patch, which surely he then doesn't approve. So I'd be inclined to
suggest making this "..., but also the unchanged parts of First Author's
code".

> the Reviewed-by of the First Author
> approves not only their own code, but the Second Author's code.  Thus
> all the code has been approved by a maintainer, as well as someone who
> was not the author.
> 
> In support of this, several arguments were put forward:
> 
> * We shouldn't make it harder for maintainers to get their code in
>   than for non-maintiners
> 
> * The system we set up should not add pointless bureaucracy; nor
>   discourage collaboration; nor encourage contributors to get around
>   the rules by dropping important information.  (For instance, by
>   removing the first SoB, so that the patch appears to have been
>   written entirely by Second Author.)
> 
> Concerns were raised about two maintainers from the same company
> colluding to get a patch in from their company; but such maintainers
> could already collude, by working on the patch in secret, and posting
> it publicly with only a single author's SoB, and having the other
> person review it.
> 
> There's also something slightly strange about adding "Reviewed-by" to
> code that you've written; but in the end you're reviewing not only the
> code itself, but the final arrangement of it.  There's no need to
> overcomplicate things.
> 
> Encode this in MAINTAINERS as follows:
> 
> * Refine the wording of requirement #2 in the check-in policy; such
> that *each change* must have approval from someone other than *the
> person who wrote it*.
> 
> * Add a paragraph explicitly stating that the multiple-SoB-approval
>   system satisfies the requirements, and why.
> 
> Signed-off-by: George Dunlap <george.dunlap@xxxxxxxxx>

Since the actual change to the policy looks good to me:
Acked-by: Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx>

Jan