"We've always had transparency, peer review, pride and personal responsibility behind our open source development method," said Linus Torvalds, as the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) announced its support for enhancements to the Linux kernel submission process to improve the accurate tracking of contributions to the kernel and ensure developers receive credit for their contributions.

"With the DCO [Certificate of Origin], we're trying to document the process," Torvalds continued. "We want to make it simpler to link submitted code to its contributors. It's like signing your own work."

The OSDL anouncement comes hard on the heels of a discussion between Linux creator Torvalds, Linux 2.6 kernel maintainer Andrew Morton, key kernel subsystem maintainers, and others in the open source community. The DCO process, in other words, benefit from a wide variety of input and has gained broad support from the wider community.

Under the enhanced kernel submission process, OSDL explains in an official news release, contributions to the Linux kernel may only be made by individuals who acknowledge their right to make the contribution under an appropriate open source license:

"The acknowledgement, called the Developer's Certificate of Origin, tracks contributions and contributors. The DCO ensures that appropriate attribution is given to developers of original contributions and derivative works, as well to those contributors who receive submissions and pass them, unchanged, up the kernel tree. All contributors are called upon to 'sign off' on a submission before it may be considered for inclusion in the kernel."

"The Linux development process has worked well for more than 10 years but with its success has come new challenges," said Stuart Cohen, CEO of OSDL. "The measure we announce today goes a long way toward eliminating doubt surrounding the origin of Linux code, and does so without placing any undue burden on the development community."

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