Re: [PATCH v6 11/21] range-diff: add tests

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 11:03:10AM -0400, Jeff King wrote:

quoted

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).

One thing I should have made clear: this is all my opinion, and anything
Thomas expresses trumps that. But since he hasn't been active lately,
this is all what I would do in the absence of input from him. Obviously
a sign-off from him is better than none. :)

-Peff