Re: Why are so many great packages not trying to get included in GNU Emacs?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden,
>  address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden,
>  address@hidden
> From: Clément Pit-Claudel <address@hidden>
> Date: Tue, 12 May 2020 15:48:01 -0400
> 
> Another strategy, which doesn't solve the problem for past commits but could 
> help for future commits, is to embed that information into commits.  
> Something like adding a line in the commit saying "I-have-assigned-copyright: 
> Yes".
> 
> Of course, just adding that line doesn't prove anything: we want to make sure 
> that we do have an assignment for that commit.
> So, instead of adding a line, the author could sign the commit with their PGP 
> key, saying "all these changes are mine or from sources owned by FSF" (a bit 
> like a developer certificate of origin).
> 
> Now the problem is reduced to "does the author with this PGP key have an 
> assignment on file"?  But this question can be answered in a decentralized 
> way (no need for an API): the FSF can just sign keys instead.

This will only work for some cases: when the committer is also the
author, and when the committer has a PGP key.  So some cases will
still need to be handled in some other way, and I suspect that those
cases are the majority.