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

[Giulio Benetti]

Hello Geert, All,

On 21/08/23 09:40, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> 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).

This is a good answer. So these are the 2 possible ways to give credits
to sponsors.

Does it make sense if I send a patch describing exactly this?
This is because my finding was only "Sponsored by" that looked good
to me. So I can avoid other possible pain for the future.

> 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/...

Right

> > 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).

[ SNIP ]

> > > > +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...

Yes it came into my mind and I wanted to rely only on DCO dropping the
part of acked-by tag. But there are too many cons for Sponsored-by approach.

So I will go for one of the 2 ways I've been pointed.

Thank you
Best regards
--
Giulio Benetti
CEO&CTO@Benetti Engineering sas