DCO: Was: Re: Contributing to gdb

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Florian Weimer <fweimer@redhat.com>
> Cc: Andrew Burgess <aburgess@redhat.com>,  Luis Machado
>  <luis.machado@arm.com>,  Tom Tromey <tom@tromey.com>,  Guinevere Larsen
>  <blarsen@redhat.com>,  Andrew Pinski <pinskia@gmail.com>,  GDB Development
>  <gdb@sourceware.org>,  Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>,  "Bradley M. Kuhn"
>  <bkuhn@sfconservancy.org>,  zoe@fsf.org,  ksiewicz@fsf.org
> Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 11:42:19 +0100
> 
> * Mark Wielaard:
> 
> > I kind of agree with Eli. The current contribution policy is pretty
> > clear. But people seem to be constantly confused about the exact
> > "rules" of using a DCO and Copyright "ownership".
> >
> > Specifically what it means for company disclaimers. With the current
> > process it is clear the FSF will take care of that. With a DCO it
> > suddenly becomes the responsibility of the individual employees to make
> > sure the company agrees to them submitting to the project.
> 
> But having a copyright assignment with the FSF does not change that at
> all: an individual authorized by an organization to submit contributions
> in principle still needs to determine if any particular change can be
> contributed according to company rules.

I think you are talking about the (relatively rare, AFAIU) situation
with employees of companies, such as Google, which have blanket
disclaimer for its employees to contribute code.  But most
contributors are not in that category: they are not "authorized" up
front to submit contributions.  They need to ask the employer to sign
an explicit disclaimer for their contributions, usually for a
relatively short period (like 5 or 10 years), after which, if the
person still works for the same company, the disclaimer needs to be
renewed.

As for determining whether any change can be contributed according to
company rules, see my other message: the assignment form explicitly
asks that question, so the contributor should find out the answer and
mention that in the form he/she submits.  If they don't know what
their employment contract says, they will have to find out when
filling the form.