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Planning for decadesPlanning for decadesPosted Mar 29, 2012 13:13 UTC (Thu) by mina86 (subscriber, #68442)In reply to: Planning for decades by jzbiciak Parent article: A turning point for GNU libc
> My understanding is that the FSF wants copyright assignment so that it can unilaterally determine its destiny. It can, for example, decide to begin releasing it under an entirely new license at some point. While it won't eradicate older versions under older licenses, it does make it easy to relicense the whole thing even if the original author didn't submit code with a "version X or later" clause.
Sorry, but this is BS.
The theory behind copyright assignment is that it's easier with litigations as you pointed later.
FSF could change GPL if they really wanted to, and the easy solution for authors that do not submit with a “or later” clause is to not accept such patches.
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Planning for decades Posted Mar 29, 2012 18:02 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
the litigation need may have been a valid argument at one time, but given that there has been so much successful GPL enforcement by people who don't have exclusive copyright assignment (gpl-violations.org, busybox to name two high profile projects), that argument doesn't really fly anymore
Planning for decades Posted Mar 29, 2012 19:19 UTC (Thu) by mina86 (subscriber, #68442) [Link]
Maybe it's not a valid argument, I'm not arguing that. What I'm saying is that the reason why FSF requires assignments for some projects is because of the litigation need, and not because they wish to have full control over the licensing of the code (which, as have been pointed out, they have quite of lot of anyway).
Planning for decades Posted Mar 29, 2012 18:06 UTC (Thu) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]
> The theory behind copyright assignment is that it's easier with litigations
This does not make sense. You can do the same thing with an agreement authorizing the FSF (or, more specifically, their lawyer) to act on your behalf, should a license violation involving your code come to their attention.
Planning for decades Posted Mar 29, 2012 18:14 UTC (Thu) by mcoleman (guest, #70990) [Link]
IANAL, but this sounds like something that would open you up to all sorts of liability. Merely giving away copyright is much more benign.
(Compare: "I authorize the FSF to use my bat as they see fit." versus "I give the FSF my bat.")
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