docs: submitting-patches: document the format for affiliation

Adding company name in round brackets to From/SoB lines
is fairly common, but I don't see it documented anywhere.
Every now and then people try to add the sponsorship lines
to the commit message, fun example from this merge window:

  Sponsored by:   The FreeBSD Foundation

from commit 2ce67f8bf1ce ("wifi: iwlwifi: mvm: fix iwl_ssid_exist()
check"). Better format would be:

  Author: Miri Korenblit (FreeBSD Foundation) <...

Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250203174626.1131225-1-kuba@kernel.org

diff --git a/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst b/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
index 8fdc0ef3e604f4cc012bdd4556b98ae080f132dd..12ed28b3d1138f5010410e7eea17d9a33d8a20d8 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
+++ b/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
@@ -717,6 +717,12 @@ patch in the permanent changelog.  If the ``from`` line is missing,
 then the ``From:`` line from the email header will be used to determine
 the patch author in the changelog.
 
+The author may indicate their affiliation or the sponsor of the work
+by adding the name of an organization to the ``from`` and ``SoB`` lines,
+e.g.:
+
+       From: Patch Author (Company) <author@example.com>
+
 Explanation Body
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^