Dear Albert ARIBAUD,
In message 20121011203003.02f27b2d@lilith you wrote:
The Signed-off-by: tag indicates that the signer was involved in the development of the patch, or that he/she was in the patch's delivery path.
My bad. I've indeed misread the Linux doc. However, the U-Boot doc is clearly on the side of "no Signed-off-by from custodians".
Why do you think you misread anything?
The sentence above explains what the SoB _means_. To me it does not include _any_ information about who should add such a line. _This_ is explained in other parts of the document, i. e. the "you wrote it or otherwise have the right to pass it on as an open-source patch".
I have strong reason to believe (by remember, IANAL) that the "or" in this statement is intended to cover the cases where the original author(s) cannot or shal not be disclosed for some reason (for example, because company FOO does not want to disclose who or how many people exactly are working on a specific task, and/or where these are located). In this case it simply means: yes, I guarantee you this can be used without restriction as an open-source patch even though I cannot/will not tell you who actually is/are the author(s).
Yes, I am aware it is also possible to interpret this as "anybody in the patch's delivery path" - but even then I cannot derive any obligation for such a passer-on to add his SoB.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk