On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 04:53:51PM +0200, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> > > These are essentially lifted from https://github.com/trast/tbdiff, with
> > > light touch-ups to account for the command now being named `git
> > > range-diff`.
> [...]
> > Just noticed while reading the whole series again (hopefully for the
> > last time :)), do we need Thomas Rast's Sign-off here, as he is
> > credited as the author here?
>
> Hmm. I hoped that my commit message was enough to indicate that while he
> is the author, I assembled this. Maybe I should move him to the footer, as
> an Original-Authored-By:?
I think the "Author" field is actually distinct from the copyright
provenance. In this case it ought to be perfectly fine to add your
signed-off-by under the DCO's point b:
The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best
of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source
license and I have the right under that license to submit that
work with modifications [...]
This is based on the tests in tbdiff, which is explicitly GPL'd by
Thomas. So your signoff certifies that, which is fine.
As for the author field, IMHO it serves two purposes:
- to give credit where it is due
- so that people digging in history know who to contact for
questions/problems
In this case it probably makes sense for it to be you, as you'd take
responsibility for the code in _this_ project. And as you note, you can
give credit in the commit message (the only unfortunate thing is that
most automated statistics would not credit Thomas, but in theory they
could by mentioning him in the trailer).
-Peff
