A bit of a mountain out of a molehill, I think. [LWN.net]

A bit of a mountain out of a molehill, I think.

Posted Mar 19, 2013 21:40 UTC (Tue) by bkuhn (subscriber, #58642)
In reply to: A bit of a mountain out of a molehill, I think. by corbet
Parent article: When does the FSF own your code?

Jon Corbet wrote:

by signing the FSF's agreement, one may be giving away ownership of code that was never intended to be submitted to the project, and even RMS can't say where the boundaries are. The FSF's "liberal license grant-back" (30-day notice required) may be cold comfort in such cases. I believe that issue is worthy of attention and discussion.

Difficult questions about scope of copyright are always likely to receive a give us a chance to think about it answer from the FSF. I'm sure everyone would prefer that the FSF continue its consistent care whenever providing an answer to such questions. It's one of the ways the FSF has maintained its clarity and consistency on these issues for so many years. There are people (whom we both know) will give rash answers and unresearched answers to such questions on mailing lists. FSF folks aren't among them.

The FSF's "liberal license grant-back" (30-day notice required) may be cold comfort in such cases.

I'd note your article doesn't say which cases you're talking about here where the license grant-back wouldn't solve the perceived problem. AFAICT, (and admittedly IANAL and TINLA), about the only thing one can't do with the license grant-back is enforce the copyright license itself (e.g., enforce the GPL). There's been a debate about the question of assignors wanting to take back GPL enforcement for themselves instead of entrusting FSF to do it, but if you're trying to relate this discussion to that one, you're being awfully (and unnecessarily) circumspect about it.

And, if we're talking future works, the author could cancel the agreement anyway for future works, and then have copyright control going forward regardless.

What Jambunathan is exploring is how he can stir the anthill, make a mess, and get attention. That's not really relevant here either.

If you believe that it's not relevant, I'm now pretty confused why you'd use it as the primary example in your article at all. I understand you want to raise an important issue, but why use an example that you agree is designed to make mountains out of anthills (to mix our two metaphors fully :).

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A bit of a mountain out of a molehill, I think.

Posted Mar 21, 2013 13:53 UTC (Thu) by bkuhn (subscriber, #58642) [Link]

Jon Corbet wrote:

how about the simple case where you want to own the copyright to your own code?

Then don't sign the copyright assignment form in the first place, and cancel it if you change your mind.

"I wouldn't want the FSF to claim ownership of code I never intended to submit to it" is such a hard thing to understand?

This is the question that RMS said himself needed further study. I can't speak for him — nor am I privy to any internal FSF discussions on this issue at this point — but I'd suspect that FSF would want to figure out a way to be flexible if possible. Indeed, I am privy to many discussions inside FSF that have been ongoing about trying to be more accommodating to the needs of contributors to FSF-copyrighted projects. However, these questions and issues are complex, FSF is a small and underfunded org with a very small staff, and therefore FSF can't change complex, time-honored policies quickly like a wealthy, for-profit company could with lots of resources to hire a team of lawyers to study complex legal questions. Most of FSF's lawyers, by contrast, are pro-bono and don't always have time to spare to give advice.

Cancellation of Assignment and FSF making unfair claims

Posted Apr 18, 2013 16:25 UTC (Thu) by kjambunathan (guest, #90456) [Link]

I am the protagonist (or villain) referred to in this article.

FYI, I have cancelled my future assignment to Emacs to make sure that the said changes do not end up in Emacs.

Inspite of my cancellation, I have received communication from Richard Stallman and Stefan Monnier that they are going ahead with the merge of my changes. This, by implication, means that FSF is claiming that I have assigned rights to said changes, when ,in fact, I am unwilling to assign the rights to FSF.

I am little bit surprised by FSF's position here. I find the FSF position not accommodating to contributor's wishes as you claim.

My assignment contract clearly says that I can report to FSF on my own initiative changes that are covered (and by extension "not covered") by the said contract. Here is the relevant quote from my future assignment.

,----
| 2. Developer will report occasionally, on Developer’s initiative
| and whenever requested by FSF, the changes and/ or enhancements
| which are covered by this contract, and (to the extent known to
| Developer) any outstanding rights, or claims of rights, of any
| person, that might be adverse to the rights of Developer or FSF
| or to the purpose of this contract.
`----

By pushing ahead with a decision to merge my changes inspite of my cancellation of assignment, FSF is not honoring the item (see above) in it's own contract.

Also by merging my (unassigned) changes to Emacs, is in violation of project policy of Emacs.

IMNSHO, FSF by snatching away my changes against my wishes, is behaving like a pick-pocket or a petty thief.

ps: Why are the Emacs or Orgmode maintainers not dropping my changes and rolling out their own. Have they really forgotten the hacker ethic started becoming smug?