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FOSDEM: State of the GNUnionFOSDEM: State of the GNUnionPosted Feb 8, 2013 13:09 UTC (Fri) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183)In reply to: FOSDEM: State of the GNUnion by pbonzini Parent article: FOSDEM: State of the GNUnion
> One of the point that John touched in his talk is how the FSF copyright assignment: 1) does not let the FSF make the software non-free; 2) gives an unlimited grant to the author that lets them do whatever they want with it.
The (L)GPL already grants a number of rights that people would not have without it. I wonder whether it couldn't also grant some sort of right of enforcement to any user of the software, and thereby make the copyright assignment ("The FSF collects copyright assignments in order to enforce the GPL") unnecessary, as well as making the playing field more even between the FSF and the rest. Granted, that has potential for being dangerous, but the people working on the licences are probably careful enough to get it right if it can be done at all.
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FOSDEM: State of the GNUnion Posted Feb 10, 2013 19:57 UTC (Sun) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]
There are limitations to what you can do with a licence and I'm pretty sure that "allowing someone else to enforce the licence on your behalf" is in the not-possible list (though I wouldn't want to speak for all jurisdictions).
Copyright is fairly restricted. You fairly quickly come into the area of contract law. And a copyright assignment is just another kind of contract...
Ya can't sue over what ya don't own Posted Feb 10, 2013 23:23 UTC (Sun) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link] A few publishers assigned Righthaven LLC the right to sue over infringement of said publishers’ copyrights, while retaining all other rights. A court stomped on that idea, deciding that Righthaven had no standing to sue over a copyright they didn't own.Sounds to me to be precisely the mechanism suggested above—it won’t work, at least in the U.S.
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