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GnuTLS, copyright assignment, and GNU project governanceGnuTLS, copyright assignment, and GNU project governancePosted Dec 22, 2012 14:52 UTC (Sat) by ian00 (guest, #55476)Parent article: GnuTLS, copyright assignment, and GNU project governance
"In summary, the arguments for copyright assignment start to look decidedly weak." Honestly, this article did not give a fair look at the benefits of copyright assignment to a non-profit like fsf, and I am sorely disappointed.
While I am not going to make a comprehensive list of copyright assignment benefits, a few things off the top of my head I think can demonstrate how out of balance this article is.
* As BKuhn said, it makes enforcement easier "linearly", which is a really big deal. The article deserves a correction, and we deserve better from our author.
* The article suggests that developers would potentially be better off enforcing copyrights themselves. But we know from BKhun that non-profits are doing the vast majority of all enforcement. This itself seems to prove otherwise overall. The article mentions a developer complaining that FSF didn't enforce something, then states: "Once a developer assigns copyright, they are at the mercy of the assignee to enforce the copyright." The strange and false implication being that the FSF's would generally actively prevent people from helping them do or fund enforcement. If this developer owned his copyrights, that wouldn't magically make someone else do the enforcement for him like he asked of the FSF.
* Dismissing relicencing as a rare and unneeded benefit, I believe is quite short sighted and wrong. Consider effectively indefinite copyright, our legislature more and more taking up laws governing technology, new technologies, and eventually people dying and becoming truly inaccessible to agree to a licence change.
* "Or later" doesn't mean that a licence shouldn't actually be changed to the later version.
* Another thing I actually haven't seen mentioned much. The idea behind copyleft (as many envision it) is that restricting our freedoms with respect to software is wrong, and in fact, it is wrong enough that we should employ our legal system to stop it from happening. However, a copyright licence cannot accomplish that task for the copyright owner. So, giving that ownership to a nonprofit which is legally bound to fulfil its mission of software freedom, is like an even stronger version of copyleft, another step to strengthening that software's freedom. For example, many free software developers have or will write proprietary code for some company, and they have free reign to use any previously copylefted code they own the copyrights to in order to do so.
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GnuTLS, copyright assignment, and GNU project governance Posted Dec 22, 2012 22:08 UTC (Sat) by hugoroy (subscriber, #60577) [Link]
Responding to your last paragraph: that's true only to the extent that this is a project written by only one person. Because if the copyleft project has got multiple contributors (i.e. different copyright holders all licensing code with each other under GPL terms) then not any single one of them can do what you describe (writing proprietary software derived from that copylefted software). So I think your argument is not valid regarding copyright assignment being more strong than copyleft to protect software freedom from software developers themselves.
An org's commitment lasts longer than any individual Posted Dec 23, 2012 14:26 UTC (Sun) by bkuhn (subscriber, #58642) [Link] Hugo Roy, it seems you've intentionally left out at least one key reason why assignment helps protect copyleft stronger. Specifically, when the assignment is made to an organization committed to defending software freedom, the it can uphold copyleft in perpetuity. I've been doing GPL enforcement for 15 years. (Hugo, I'm not sure how long you've been doing enforcement — or even if you have at all — so maybe you just haven't been around long enough to see this point.) I know that it's extremely rare to find a copyright holder like Erik Andersen, who cares so deeply about copyleft he wants to be involved with enforcement actions for decades. This kind of commitment by an individual for a task as boring as GPL enforcement comes along but once in a generation. Meanwhile, an organization that cares about software freedom can live on, and new staff can come in when the prior staff burns out (this happens a lot in non-profits), and keep going to uphold software freedom.
An org's commitment lasts longer than any individual Posted Dec 23, 2012 16:43 UTC (Sun) by dd9jn (subscriber, #4459) [Link]
Well, that organization may be commited to free software but that does not mean their actions are appropriate. It doesn't help to enforce the GPL if more and more projects are turning away from copyleft. Meanwhile, a major part of the world's Linux installations are not under the GPL (except for the kernel) but under more permissive licenses (Android); or used without FSF copyrighed GPL code (almost all embedded Linux systems).
I consider it more important to decide on a useful strategy to foster the use of copyleft code. Recent pejorative comments from RMS about projects helping to migrate from Android to Cyanogenmod are doing exactly the opposite: they drive user, willing to go for more freedom, permanently away from free software. The gcc/LLVM case will even be worse if you look a few years in the future after many students have learned to hack LLVM instead of gcc.
An org's commitment lasts longer than any individual Posted Dec 27, 2012 22:17 UTC (Thu) by gerv (subscriber, #3376) [Link]
"It doesn't help to enforce the GPL if more and more projects are turning away from copyleft."
And it doesn't help copyleft if lack of enforcement means that it's functionally equivalent to BSD.
Gerv
An org's commitment lasts longer than any individual Posted Dec 28, 2012 8:06 UTC (Fri) by dd9jn (subscriber, #4459) [Link]
Who was talking about not enforcing the GPL? The FSF seems to have problems with that but there are other groups who successfully go after violations.
An org's commitment lasts longer than any individual Posted Dec 28, 2012 15:38 UTC (Fri) by hugoroy (subscriber, #60577) [Link]
You've made an extensive interpretation of what I wrote and what I was responding to. I was not talking about enforcement of copyleft (that would be protecting copyleft against people violating it) but about protecting software freedom from software developers themselves. Assignment or not, copyleft is enough legally to protect software freedom. Enforcement is another issue and may require assignment to be effective, we can discuss precisely how it's better achieved, but please note that it is totally not what my argument, or the post I was responding to, was about.
An org's commitment lasts longer than any individual Posted Dec 28, 2012 15:46 UTC (Fri) by hugoroy (subscriber, #60577) [Link]
Re-reading the paragraph I was responding to in my initial comment: I may have missed the argument. Maybe he was actually writing about enforcement, but as the distinction was not clear I think I replied besides.
unenforced copyleft is the same as the ISC license Posted Dec 28, 2012 17:22 UTC (Fri) by bkuhn (subscriber, #58642) [Link] Hugo, an unenforced copyleft is the same as the ISC license. (Gerv also made a similar point in this thread.) Therefore, I don't think it's logical to make some distinction about the usefulness of copyleft outside of enforcement, and I'm surprised that you've done so. If folks want to comply voluntarily with copyleft, they could treat ISC as if it the same requirements as GPL. Indeed, even Theo de Raadt encourages (but doesn't require by licenses) that people to share all their software source code with everyone. Thus, it's only when someone violates that there's any distinction between copyleft and non-copyleft.
unenforced copyleft is the same as the ISC license Posted Dec 28, 2012 18:43 UTC (Fri) by andresfreund (subscriber, #69562) [Link]
> Hugo, an unenforced copyleft is the same as the ISC license.
Uhm. No. Maybe its that way for some companies but to the definitely existing mass of people/companies who actually try to adhere to licences its not even remotely the same.
unenforced copyleft is the same as the ISC license Posted Dec 28, 2012 20:31 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
Let's try again:
Unenforced copyleft, from the point of view of a person that is licensing to an uneducated, impolite company, is the same as the ISC license. From the point of view of the licensor to an illuminated company, no enforcement would be needed.
unenforced copyleft is the same as the ISC license Posted Dec 28, 2012 22:06 UTC (Fri) by hugoroy (subscriber, #60577) [Link]
I do not agree. A copyleft license is never the same as an ISC license, in one case the company is doing something illegal whereas in the other case it's legal. Of course, we can talk about the best way to enforce copyleft, but that's a different issue in my opinion.
Again, I was responding to the argument that was done that assignment is a stronger protection of freedom than copyleft, which implies that copyleft without assignment is less protecting. I disagree.
We can have copyleft projects which require assignments, that allow a single copyright-holder to make dual-licensing for instance. So of course, we can think of assignment only to non-for-profit which are supporting software freedom. But then we have a problem of ressources that such centralisation would need.
unenforced copyleft is the same as the ISC license Posted Dec 28, 2012 22:25 UTC (Fri) by bkuhn (subscriber, #58642) [Link] hugoroy wrote: I was responding to the argument that was done that assignment is a stronger protection of freedom than copyleft I don't think anyone on this thread argued that. By contrast, I argued that if no one is willing to enforce GPL, the net policy effect is the same as if the code had been under the ISC license. Gerv argued something similar. Companies don't mind infringing copyright at all if they have a strong belief they won't get caught. That much is obvious, given that hundreds infringe copyright and violate GPL every day just based on the fact that the odds are relatively low they'll be enforced against. Imagine how many more would if everyone believed there was no chance at all enforcement would occur. One reason assignment is useful is that developers can assign their copyrights to an entity you know will act to enforce the GPL, as FSF and Conservancy do. In my experience, it's very rare that developers have the fortitude to put up with how difficult enforcement is. I've never known anyone, except for myself and Erik Andersen, who have been willing to continually work on GPL enforcement for a period of decades. It's strange you mention resource allocation. I'm in communication with everyone who does community-oriented GPL enforcement. None of them have adequate resources, and some never even check source releases once they come out due to lack of resources. As I said in my interview in The H, checking the CCS is the most important and most time-consuming task. Indeed, CCS checks can be distributed. The problem is, there are very few volunteers forthcoming to do it. I've asked for volunteers for years, and I've been lucky if a volunteer does one before they get burned out. It's boring work, and requires practice to get efficient and do it correctly. Therefore, I don't think centralizing copyright holdership causes the centralization of enforcement. The reason that enforcement is centralized in a few places is simply because it's very difficult, time-consuming work that requires a lot of knowledge and experience, and very few people are willing to do that work. I often wish more CCS checkers would volunteer for Conservancy and FSF. The more people out there talking about how CCS check works, the less FUD would be spread. Yet, folks just don't want to do it. As I said in my interview, in fact, the few folks who have the skills to do often want more money than non-profits can pay! Anyway, as mentioned multiple times above, there's more about this issue in the interview that I did in The-H.
An org's commitment lasts longer than any individual Posted Jan 11, 2013 22:22 UTC (Fri) by seneca6 (guest, #63916) [Link]
Bradley, are you sure you want to address Hugo in your comment and not "ian00"? And I don't understand the "intentionally" part at all.
(I realise this is an old discussion, just for the sake of clarity.)
GnuTLS, copyright assignment, and GNU project governance Posted Dec 23, 2012 5:16 UTC (Sun) by rfontana (subscriber, #52677) [Link] Dismissing relicencing as a rare and unneeded benefit, I believe is quite short sighted and wrong. Consider effectively indefinite copyright, our legislature more and more taking up laws governing technology, new technologies, and eventually people dying and becoming truly inaccessible to agree to a licence change. My sense of the article was that the author was saying that relicensing was a dubious benefit of copyright assignment for GNU projects in particular, since such projects invariably use "or later" licensing and it is probably quite rare for the FSF to relicense its copyrighted code from (a) GPL to LGPL, (b) GPL/LGPL to noncopyleft, or (c) GPL/LGPL to some non-GNU copyleft license. There are known historical examples of (a) (though I have a feeling that such examples are typically ancient) and I suspect there have been rare cases of (b); I'd be rather shocked if (c) had ever occurred. Copyright assignment is not the only policy that can be used to ease relicensing, but that's a whole nother topic. I've come to think that, for all its cultural pain, copyright assigment may actually be more honest than such alternative instruments as CLAs or, say, requiring contributions to a copyleft-outbound project to be licensed in under a noncopyleft license. These alternative instruments are troubling to me as they seem to feed off a prevailing irrational sentiment among many developers that giving up formal ownership (while retaining a license allowing most of what ownership gave you) is somehow worse than retaining formal ownership while giving some inbound entity much of what ownership transfer would have given it, including power to relicense. The best policy IMO is inbound=outbound and acceptance that possible future relicensing may be a bit of a hassle for copyleft projects. In general it's a problem that has been exaggerated by people on all sides of disputes over contribution policies.
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