Re: [RFC PATCH 1/1] docs: submitting-patches: Add Sponsored-by tag to give credits to who sponsored the patch

[Geert Uytterhoeven]

Hi Giulio,

On Sun, Aug 20, 2023 at 2:35 AM Giulio Benetti
<giulio.benetti@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >
> > (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@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

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).

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/...

> 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).

> >> Signed-off-by: Giulio Benetti <giulio.benetti@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >> ---
> >>   Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst | 38 ++++++++++++++++++++
> >>   1 file changed, 38 insertions(+)
> >>
> >> diff --git a/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst b/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
> >> index efac910e2659..870e6b5def3f 100644
> >> --- a/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
> >> +++ b/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
> >> @@ -600,6 +600,44 @@ process nor the requirement to Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on all stable
> >>   patch candidates. For more information, please read
> >>   Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules.rst.
> >>
> >> +Using Sponsored-by:
> >> +-------------------
> >> +
> >> +A Sponsored-by tag gives credit to who sponsored the creation and/or the
> >> +upstreaming process of the patch. Sponsored-by can contain a company name or
> >> +a physical person name. If a company sponsored the patch this is the form::
> >> +
> >> +    Company Name <mail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >> +
> >> +where the Company Name must be a valid Business Name at the time of sending the
> >> +patch until the confirmation of the Sponsored-by tag, while the e-mail can be
> >> +either a generic e-mail the company can be reached out or an e-mail of a person
> >> +who has the rights inside it to confirm the Sponsored-by tag.
> >> +
> >> +If a physical person sponsored the patch the form must be same used in
> >> +Signed-off-by tag::
> >> +
> >> +    Physical Person <physical.person@xxxxxxxx>
> >> +
> >> +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@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >> +    Signed-off-by: Developer Name <developer.name@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >> +
> >> +The result including the answer from the sponsor must be::
> >> +
> >> +    <changelog>
> >> +
> >> +    Sponsored-by: Company Name <mail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >> +    Acked-by: Company Name <mail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >> +    Signed-off-by: Developer Name <developer.name@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >> +
> >> +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...

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

                        Geert

-- 
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
                                -- Linus Torvalds