The most powerful contributor agreement [LWN.net]

The most powerful contributor agreement

Posted Apr 3, 2014 4:04 UTC (Thu) by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
Parent article: The most powerful contributor agreement

Hmm, the DCO blocks things like taking a random Android device/kernel and upstreaming the drivers and board support for that device, since random Android device kernel devs probably haven't done the DCO dance.

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The most powerful contributor agreement

Posted Apr 3, 2014 4:20 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (1 responses)

No, clauses (b) and (c) cover that case.

The most powerful contributor agreement

Posted Apr 3, 2014 15:52 UTC (Thu) by louie (guest, #3285) [Link]

They permit that case, but not clear that they actually solve that case - you don't, in that situation, get the indentifiability/trackability of the source that is supposedly the primary benefit of the DCO.

The most powerful contributor agreement

Posted Apr 3, 2014 16:36 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] (1 responses)

The general kernel policy is not to take code whose author doesn't want it contributed to the kernel, despite the GPL giving the project the right to do so. (In general, this is wise, since it's possible that some code was written for a Windows (or chip reference) driver and leaked to a third party, and the third party combined it with the GPL kernel without any license to some of the code, such that the author of the first part never had to accept the GPL and the kernel wouldn't have a proper license to that part of the code.)

Even when the code is structured such that it is clear that it must be licensed by the copyright holder to any recipients under the GPL, it's just seen as impolite to take code into the project against the author's wishes.

The most powerful contributor agreement

Posted Apr 6, 2014 0:43 UTC (Sun) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

What happens when the author/copyright holder hasn't expressed any opinion about mainlining the code but just hasn't bothered to do that? I expect that is the situation for almost all Android versions of the Linux kernel.