| 1 | How to contribute a patch to Samba
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| 2 | ----------------------------------
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| 3 |
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| 4 | Simple, just make the code change, and email it as either a "diff -u"
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| 5 | change, or as a "git format-patch" change against the original source
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| 6 | code to samba-technical@samba.org, or attach it to a bug report at
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| 7 | http://bugzilla.samba.org
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| 8 |
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| 9 | For larger code changes, breaking the changes up into a set of simple
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| 10 | patches, each of which does a single thing, are much easier to review.
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| 11 | Patch sets like that will most likely have an easier time being merged
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| 12 | into the Samba code than large single patches that make lots of
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| 13 | changes in one large diff.
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| 14 |
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| 15 | Ownership of the contributed code
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| 16 | ---------------------------------
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| 17 |
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| 18 | Samba is a project with distributed copyright ownership, which means
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| 19 | we prefer the copyright on parts of Samba to be held by individuals
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| 20 | rather than corporations if possible. There are historical legal
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| 21 | reasons for this, but one of the best ways to explain it is that it's
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| 22 | much easier to work with individuals who have ownership than corporate
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| 23 | legal departments if we ever need to make reasonable compromises with
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| 24 | people using and working with Samba.
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| 25 |
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| 26 | We track the ownership of every part of Samba via git, our source code
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| 27 | control system, so we know the provenance of every piece of code that
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| 28 | is committed to Samba.
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| 29 |
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| 30 | So if possible, if you're doing Samba changes on behalf of a company
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| 31 | who normally owns all the work you do please get them to assign
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| 32 | personal copyright ownership of your changes to you as an individual,
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| 33 | that makes things very easy for us to work with and avoids bringing
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| 34 | corporate legal departments into the picture.
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| 35 |
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| 36 | If you can't do this we can still accept patches from you owned by
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| 37 | your employer under a standard employment contract with corporate
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| 38 | copyright ownership. It just requires a simple set-up process first.
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| 39 |
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| 40 | We use a process very similar to the way things are done in the Linux
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| 41 | kernel community, so it should be very easy to get a sign off from
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| 42 | your corporate legal department. The only changes we've made are to
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| 43 | accommodate the licenses we use, which are GPLv3 and LGPLv3 (or later)
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| 44 | whereas the Linux kernel uses GPLv2.
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| 45 |
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| 46 | The process is called signing.
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| 47 |
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| 48 | How to sign your work
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| 49 | ---------------------
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| 50 |
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| 51 | Once you have permission to contribute to Samba from
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| 52 | your employer, simply email a copy of the following text
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| 53 | from your corporate email address to contributing@samba.org
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| 54 |
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| 55 | ------------------------------------------------------------
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| 56 | Samba Developer's Certificate of Origin. Version 1.0
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| 57 |
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| 58 | By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:
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| 59 |
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| 60 | (a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I
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| 61 | have the right to submit it under the appropriate
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| 62 | version of the GNU General Public License; or
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| 63 |
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| 64 | (b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best
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| 65 | of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source
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| 66 | license and I have the right under that license to submit that
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| 67 | work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part
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| 68 | by me, under the GNU General Public License, in the
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| 69 | appropriate version; or
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| 70 |
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| 71 | (c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other
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| 72 | person who certified (a) or (b) and I have not modified
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| 73 | it.
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| 74 |
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| 75 | (d) I understand and agree that this project and the
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| 76 | contribution are public and that a record of the
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| 77 | contribution (including all metadata and personal
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| 78 | information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is
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| 79 | maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed
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| 80 | consistent with the Samba Team's policies and the
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| 81 | requirements of the GNU GPL where they are relevant.
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| 82 |
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| 83 | (e) I am granting this work to this project under the terms of both
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| 84 | the GNU General Public License and the GNU Lesser General Public
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| 85 | License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version
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| 86 | 3 of these Licenses, or (at the option of the project) any later
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| 87 | version.
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| 88 |
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| 89 | http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html
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| 90 | http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.html
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| 91 | ------------------------------------------------------------
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| 92 |
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| 93 | We will maintain a copy of that email as a record that you have the
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| 94 | rights to contribute code to Samba under the required licenses whilst
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| 95 | working for the company where the email came from.
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| 96 |
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| 97 | Then when sending in a patch via the normal mechanisms described
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| 98 | above, add a line that states:
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| 99 |
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| 100 | Signed-off-by: Random J Developer <random@developer.example.org>
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| 101 |
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| 102 | using your real name and the email address you sent the original email
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| 103 | you used to send the Samba Developer's Certificate of Origin to us
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| 104 | (sorry, no pseudonyms or anonymous contributions.)
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| 105 |
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| 106 | That's it ! Such code can then quite happily contain changes that have
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| 107 | copyright messages such as :
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| 108 |
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| 109 | (C) Example Corporation.
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| 110 |
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| 111 | and can be merged into the Samba codebase in the same way as patches
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| 112 | from any other individual. You don't need to send in a copy of the
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| 113 | Samba Developer's Certificate of Origin for each patch, or inside each
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| 114 | patch. Just the sign-off message is all that is required once we've
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| 115 | received the initial email.
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| 116 |
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| 117 | Have fun and happy Samba hacking !
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| 118 |
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| 119 | The Samba Team.
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| 120 |
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