clarify CLA and DCO policy for pre-transfer history

[jlanz]

Signed-off-by: Jon Lanz jon.lanz@dreamworks.com

[jlanz]

Hmm, should this file be named something different, perhaps DCO_signoff.txt ?

[jlanz]

I suppose another question is should this file exist in every OpenMoonRay/ repository? ... and if so can it contain a link to this top-level file?

[matthewlow-dwa]

Agreed that ‎RE-LICENSE_NOTE.txt is perhaps a misleading filename as it suggests something related to the Apache 2.0 license, which is not changing. DCO_signoff.txt seems fine.

I wonder if we also need to add a date or commit hash to scope the range of covered commits, e.g.:

The following copyright holders agree that all of their contributions originally submitted to this project prior to May 29th, 2026 (commit hash: 1234asdf) are submitted pursuant to ...

Lastly, while I like the simplicity of this approach, having a single file provide blanket coverage for all commits based on contributor names (similar to other projects' relicensing approaches), I wonder if more explicit per-commit sign-off is needed based on ASWF Contribution Guidelines and the linked Contribution Checker script:

• https://tac.aswf.io/process/contributing.html#signoff-for-commits-where-the-dco-signoff-was-missed
• https://github.com/jmertic/contrib_check

The policy and script seems to suggest each user would need their own file in a dco-signoffs directory, explicitly enumerating each covered commit by hash and message.

I suppose which approach is taken, and whether or not the contrib_check script is used, will help inform if this needs to be done per-repo or can be aggregated into just here in the superproject.

@jmertic , any thoughts or guidance here?

[jlanz]

Actually, I found this, which seems to imply that the file should be named past_commits.txt.

I also found this, but I'm still reading up and haven't tried running it.

[jmertic]

Howdy - so there isn't a universal way to do this. I think what likely would make sense is to have some sort of a note in there ( in the README.md or maybe CONTRIBUTING ) that indicates the date of the switchover, as the tools will have a feature ( once I finish it up ;-) ) that will say "only look at commits after a specific date".

[jlanz]

@jmertic - is this what you had in mind?

[jmertic]

Yep - this looks good! Thanks!