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From:   Alex Deucher <alexdeucher@gmail.com>
Date:   Fri, 16 Sep 2022 17:29:10 -0400
Message-ID: <CADnq5_MC+WYSdPPmMoFYzwwC1ANwtjo0XvEhOLbOLkPfYs4hiw@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: linux-firmware signed commits; does anyone care?
To:     Josh Boyer <jwboyer@kernel.org>
Cc:     Linux Firmware <linux-firmware@kernel.org>,
        Juerg Haefliger <juerg.haefliger@canonical.com>,
        Peter Robinson <pbrobinson@fedoraproject.org>,
        Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.com>, contact@laurentcarlier.com,
        mpagano@gentoo.org,
        "Limonciello, Mario" <Mario.Limonciello@amd.com>,
        Jared Dominguez <jaredz@redhat.com>,
        Benjamin Tissoires <benjamin.tissoires@redhat.com>,
        "Linux-Kernel@Vger. Kernel. Org" <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
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No objections from me.  I don't see much value in it.

Alex

On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 9:33 AM Josh Boyer <jwboyer@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> Some time ago, we went back to doing ~monthly releases for
> linux-firmware primarily to help distributions package firmware in a
> simpler manner.  We GPG sign the tarballs, as is good practice, but as
> part of reintroducing the tarballs we also started having a
> linux-firmware maintainer GPG sign *every* commit done by a
> maintainer.  The intention there was that because we're dealing with
> binary blobs we really have no recourse to see changes unlike a source
> code repo.  The signed commits at least provides a measure for
> interested people to ensure the repo itself is only being committed to
> by a recognized maintainer and it isn't compromised (in theory).  The
> downside is that pull requests are merged non-ff and we wind up
> signing the merge commit.
>
> The question at hand though, is does anyone care about the GPG signed
> commits?  It's not clear to me this practice is even noticed nor if it
> is bringing any value to this project.  Since we've started this
> practice, I am literally the only one committing to the repo and while
> it isn't hard to do I want to know if it's actually useful to anyone.
>
> I ask for two separate reasons.  The first is that a group of
> interested firmware submitters is looking at modernizing the workflow
> for the linux-firmware project and moving to a merge request workflow
> instead of submitting giant binary blob patches via email.  This would
> allow us to put some CI in place for simple checks to the WHENCE file,
> etc.  Doing this while still having GPG signed commits isn't
> impossible but it certainly complicates things a bit, and would likely
> require a trusted bot to sign commits.  That has implications on
> secret storage and changes the dynamic on trust levels that make the
> whole thing even more questionable.
>
> The second reason is that even if people are validating the GPG signed
> commits, it's not exactly user friendly.  I've been looking at
> sigstore and recor and that might be a better solution in the long run
> if we do want to utilize something like the current scheme.
>
> I'll still GPG sign the tarballs, but I'd like to propose dropping our
> current self-imposed requirement that all commits are GPG signed.
> Thoughts?
>
> josh