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

[Giulio Benetti]

Hi Laurent,

On 18/08/23 01:23, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> Hi Giulio,
>
> 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>

If I am the customer I'd really prefer the first option.

Kind regards
--
Giulio Benetti
CEO&CTO@Benetti Engineering sas

> > 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.
> > +
> >   .. _the_canonical_patch_format:
> >   
> >   The canonical patch format