On Mon, 7 Jul 2025 at 22:42, Jeff King [off-list ref] wrote:

On Sun, Jul 06, 2025 at 04:30:09PM +0000, brian m. carlson wrote:

I.e., why are we sure that it is OK for us to loosen this requirement
(without jeopardizing the legal status of contributions). And I think
the answer is along the lines of "the kernel did it, and they checked
with lawyers, so we can piggy-back on that work". But it would be nice
if we could cite that source, and maybe even lift some of their
language.

Looks like the kernel commit here:

  https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=d4563201f33a022fc0353033d9dfeb1606a88330

cites CNCF here:

  https://github.com/cncf/foundation/blob/659fd32c86dc/dco-guidelines.md

I don't know if there's any public discussion or statement from the
Linux Foundation or other legal folks on the kernel's wording.

The commit is "Acked-by: Michael Dolan [off-list ref]",
which seems to be a lawyer at LF, e.g., as per Ted's post elsewhere in
this thread. So that could be seen as some kind of statement.

So there
might not be anything better to cite. And possibly we could run it past
Conservancy's counsel. I'll leave that up to PLC folks to decide on.

Martin