Re: Process for cherry-picking patches from other projects

[George Dunlap <George.Dunlap@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> On May 16, 2022, at 4:04 PM, Andrew Cooper <Andrew.Cooper3@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 4) When importing an entire file from an upstream like Linux, what tags do 
>> we need?
> 
> Any clear reference to where it came from.
> 
> Nothing is ever imported verbatim.  If nothing else, paths have to be
> changed, and usually more than that.
> 
> Given that, I do question whether it is appropriate to retain original
> authorship.  The original author did not write a patch for Xen, and what
> gets committed wasn't the patch they wrote.

Not sure what you meant by authorship here — do you mean in the git commit?  In 
the GPL header of the file?

The original author (or the company they work for) may own a copyright on the 
code; if the owner of the copyright comes around and accuses us of 
infringement, we need to be able to a) demonstrate that we are generally trying 
to respect copyright (by requiring people to assert that the copyright question 
is all in order for the handled code) b) be able to track back to find where 
the infringement happened so that we can take appropriate remedial action 
(either education or sanction as appropriate).

I think if the GPL header of the file contains “Copyright YYYY by ${AUTHOR}”, 
that copyright notice should be retained when importing the file.

 -George

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