Re: DCO: Was: Re: Contributing to gdb

Guinevere Larsen via Gdb
2024-06-17T16:38:48Z

On 6/17/24 1:32 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2024 12:57:41 -0300
>> Cc: GDB Development <gdb@sourceware.org>, binutils <binutils@sourceware.org>
>> From: Guinevere Larsen via Gdb <gdb@sourceware.org>
>>
>> On 6/17/24 12:00 PM, Andrew Pinski wrote:
>>> On Mon, Jun 17, 2024 at 5:23 AM Guinevere Larsen via Gdb
>>> <gdb@sourceware.org> wrote:
>>>> Just a heads up, too, if your patch isn't a trivial fix, you might need
>>>> to sign a bit of paperwork giving the copyright of changes to GDB to the
>>>> Free Software Foundation before we are able to accept the changes. I
>>>> mention this up front because I know a few people who were turned off by
>>>> the idea, even though the process itself isn't complicated.
>>> I just noticed that GDB (and binutils) are currently not accepting
>>> DCO's like both glibc
>>> (https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/Contribution%20checklist#Copyright_and_license)
>>> and GCC (https://gcc.gnu.org/contribute.html#legal) are now accepting.
>>> Has there been any talk about accepting DCOs for gdb and binutils? Or
>>> has this not been brought up yet?
>> I haven't heard of it yet, every time I see a new contributor with a
>> patch accepted, the copyright assignment is always the way everyone
>> uses, and it has stalled the last release.
>>
>> I for one would absolutely love if we could use a quick DCO line instead
>> of current process.
> I don't think the risks which come with accepting DCOs are justified
> in GDB at least. The number of one-off contributors to GDB is
> basically zero.
>
I know of 2 people who decided to not contribute to GDB as soon as I
mentioned that there was a copyright process.

I also know of one person who I know was be a one off contributor
(strager, who made a contribution just to make a video on how easy it is
to contribute to open source projects). And saying we don't have them is
a chicken and egg problem to me... could it be that we don't have them
specifically because the process is so hostile to this type of contribution?

--
Cheers,
Guinevere Larsen
She/Her/Hers