[LinuxBIOS] Signed-off-by versus Acked-by

Segher Boessenkool segher at kernel.crashing.org
Sun Dec 10 13:12:07 CET 2006


>> Signed-off-by: Uwe Hermann <uwe at hermann-uwe.de>
>> Acked-by: Uwe Hermann <uwe at hermann-uwe.de>
>
> I think this defeats the purpose of the Acked-by tag. If
> "Acked-by" means you agree with the patch and you need an
> "Acked-by" from the same person who added the "Signed-off-by",
> then "Signed-off-by" suddenly implies that you don't
> necessarily agree with the patch. Which leads to the
> question: Why did you sign it off when you don't agree
> with it?
> The Linux kernel developers either sign off a patch or
> ack it, but not both at the same time. We can of course
> differ from their habits, but the reasoning should be
> sound.

Signed-off-by means the patch passed through your hands
and you have the legal right to pass it on.  Acked-by
is just a comment saying who approved this going into
the SVN tree, it is completely separate; it should probably
be called Approved-by or something like that.  I don't
really see it having any real purpose, but maybe that's
just me :-)


Segher





More information about the coreboot mailing list