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IBM and FSF work hand-in-glove on GPL enforcementIBM and FSF work hand-in-glove on GPL enforcementPosted Sep 26, 2003 19:32 UTC (Fri) by emk (subscriber, #1128)In reply to: Copyrights and GPL - perhaps IBM should hang on to copyrights in future by dwalters Parent article: IBM Files New Claims Against SCO in Linux Case (Dow Jones) Although you'd never guess it from listening to Stallman, the FSF is an extremely savvy and diplomatic organization, and it works closely with all sorts of people--free software developers, coporations, and IBM legal. I'm sure that the decision to transfer copyrights from IBM to the FSF was made after very careful deliberation by very smart people.
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IBM and FSF work hand-in-glove on GPL enforcement Posted Sep 26, 2003 21:33 UTC (Fri) by donwaugaman (subscriber, #4214) [Link] It didn't take that much deliberation, because gcc/binutils/glibc/etc. are part of the GNU project. As such, they will not accept code from anyone who has not given a copyright assigment for that code to the FSF[*]. If you want to contribute to any GNU project software, particularly core parts like the above, you either sign the assignment or don't contribute.Linux, on the other hand, is not part of the GNU project, and so a copyright assignment is not necessary for Linus to roll your patch into his kernel. So IBM can keep copyright on its contributions, though they must be GPL licensed. Thus, IBM has standing to invoke the GPL against SCO (as does anyone else who has contributed to the kernel). [*] except for the case of "trivial obvious" patches (e.g. spelling errors, misplaced semicolon, etc.) which they will bend the rules on. But if you're thinking of tacking on a new switch, or building a new optimization pass for a compiler, it's assign or don't contribute.
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