Hi,

I prefer patches be submitted via e-mail to [email protected] so that other ext4 developers can review and comment on patches. That being said, for simple patches, I'm happy to accept pull requests; however, it's important that the commit and commit description meets the requirements documented for kernel changes[1].

[1] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/submitting-patches.html

In particular, please note the section for the Developer's Certification of Origin (DCO), also sometimes known as the Signed-off-by tag. This is an important and formal legal declaration that you have the rights to make the code contribution (for example, if you are employed, that your employer has approved that you be able to make code contributions to open source projects; most employment contracts by default will give all copyright ownership to the employer, even for work done "on your own time").

Hi - got it. Let me confirm with my employer, and I will reopen the PR if it's relevant.

Note that for this kind of thing, if you can't get permission to contribute a patch, you can just submit a bug report, and even point out the explicit line where the problem exists. For something as trivial as this, it's easy enough for me fix it without having to worry about intellectual property issues.

Your company might also be willing to give you permission so long as you submit from your work address, so they get a bit of free publicity. There are also materials to help convince employers why allowing employees to participate in open source projects makes good business sense, and if they are worried about liability concerns, they can join the Linux Foundation and have their lawyers talk to other general counsels from companies like IBM, Google, Canonical, Intel, etc., who can "speak their language" (e.g., lawyerese :-) and hopefully set their minds at ease.