Indeed. What I'm saying is it might not work to remove that guilt if a bug is reported and a solution presented, and then instead of incorporating the solution

Indeed. What I'm saying is it might not work to remove that guilt if a bug is reported and a solution presented, and then instead of incorporating the solution presented the kernel team (without DCO in hand) fixes the bug using code that looks suspiciously inspired by the provided solution. This is murky enough that it would have to be decided in the court of law, but it's not cut and dry enough that it would be immediately thrown out of that court of law.