Re: [RFC Patch net-next v2 0/8] net: dsa: microchip: add PTP support for KSZ9x and LAN937x

[Vladimir Oltean]

Hi Arun,

On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 09:11:42PM +0530, Arun Ramadoss wrote:
> The LAN937x switch has capable for supporting IEEE 1588 PTP protocol. This
> patch series add PTP support and tested using the ptp4l application.
> LAN937x has the same PTP register set similar to KSZ9563, hence the
> implementation has been made common for the ksz switches.
> KSZ9563 does not support two step timestamping but LAN937x supports both.
> Tested the 1step & 2step p2p timestamping in LAN937x and p2p1step
> timestamping in KSZ9563.

A process-related pattern I noticed in your patches. The Author: is in
general the same as the first Signed-off-by:. I don't know of cases
where that's not true.

There can be more subsequent Signed-off-by: tags, and those are people
through the hands of whom those patches have passed, and who might have
made changes to them.

When you use Christian's patches (verbatim or with non-radical rework,
like fixes here and there, styling rework, commit message rewrite),
you need Christian to appear in the Author: and first Signed-off-by:
field, and you in the second. When patches are more or less a complete
rework (such that it no longer resembles Christian's original intentions
and it would be misleading to put his sign off on something which he did
not write), you can put yourself as author and first sign off, and use
Co-developed-by: + Signed-off-by for Christian's work (the sign off
still seems to be required for some reason). You need to use your
judgement here, you can't always put your name on others' work.
You can also say "based on a previous patch posted on the mailing lists
which was heavily reworked" and provide a Link: tag with a
lore.kernel.org or patchwork.kernel.org link. Under the "---" sign in
the patch you can also clarify the changes you've made, if you decide to
keep Christian's authorship but make significant but not radical changes.
These annotations will always be visible in patchwork even if not in
git. At least that's what I would do.