Contributing to the kernel.org website

Thank you for your interest in contributing to the kernel.org website!

Submitting contributions

Contributions should be sent via email to tools@kernel.org. Please include a clear description of your changes and the reasoning behind them.

Licensing

This project uses two licenses depending on the type of contribution:

Sponsor and partner logos are copyright by their respective owners and are used by permission. They are not covered by the above licenses.

By submitting a contribution, you agree to license your work under the applicable license listed above.

Developer Certificate of Origin

All code contributions must include a Signed-off-by: trailer in each commit message, certifying that you wrote or otherwise have the right to submit the code under the project's open source license. This follows the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) process used by the Linux kernel and many other open source projects.

To add your sign-off, use git commit -s or manually append the following line to your commit message:

Signed-off-by: Your Name <your.email@example.com>

AI-assisted contributions

AI agents (LLMs, coding assistants, etc.) are not permitted to use Signed-off-by: or Co-developed-by: trailers, as they cannot certify the DCO. When a contribution is made with AI assistance, the AI tool must be credited with an Assisted-by: trailer that includes the full model version identifier. For example:

Signed-off-by: Your Name <your.email@example.com>
Assisted-by: claude-opus-4-6-20250925

The human contributor remains responsible for reviewing all AI-generated changes, ensuring correctness, and certifying the DCO via their own Signed-off-by: trailer.

What to contribute

Some examples of welcome contributions include:

  • Fixes for typos or outdated information
  • Improvements to the FAQ or documentation pages
  • Enhancements to the website theme or templates
  • Bug fixes in the releases plugin or build tooling

Building the site

The site is built using Pelican. Install the dependencies from requirements.txt and run pelican to generate the site. Note that a full build requires access to the kernel git repositories; set PELICAN_DRYRUN=1 to skip release tracking during local development.