What’s the point of the Sign Off feature in Git?
git commit --signoff
When should I use it, if at all?
What’s the point of the Sign Off feature in Git ? git commit –signoff
Share
Sign Up to our social questions and Answers Engine to ask questions, answer people’s questions, and connect with other people.
Login to our social questions & Answers Engine to ask questions answer people’s questions & connect with other people.
Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link and will create a new password via email.
Please briefly explain why you feel this question should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this answer should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this user should be reported.
What’s the point of the Sign Off feature in Git?
git commit --signoff
When should I use it, if at all?
Sign-off is a requirement for getting patches into the Linux kernel and a few other projects, but most projects don’t actually use it.
It was introduced in the wake of the SCO lawsuit, (and other accusations of copyright infringement from SCO, most of which they never actually took to court), as a Developers Certificate of Origin. It is used to say that you certify that you have created the patch in question, or that you certify that to the best of your knowledge, it was created under an appropriate open-source license, or that it has been provided to you by someone else under those terms. This can help establish a chain of people who take responsibility for the copyright status of the code in question, to help ensure that copyrighted code not released under an appropriate free software (open source) license is not included in the kernel.