GnuTLS, copyright assignment, and GNU project governance

Posted Dec 31, 2012 9:25 UTC (Mon) by mkerrisk (subscriber, #1978)
In reply to: GnuTLS, copyright assignment, and GNU project governance by bkuhn
Parent article: GnuTLS, copyright assignment, and GNU project governance

Paul wrote: great reporting, Michael. It's fair, balanced and well-researched writing like that that makes LWN so great.
I agree with the part about well-researched and good writing, and that it's a good opinion piece. But, I think it really is opinion, not journalism, particularly the Concluding Remarks section.

(Thanks Paul.)

@Bradley: to be clear, I hope it is fairly evident from the writing which parts of my article are the results of research and which are my opinions. I certainly don't intend for the line between the two to be fuzzy, and any place where it is fuzzy is a "bug" in the writing, as far as I'm concerned. (I don't buy the notion sometimes expressed that there's journalism without opinion; there's just journalism that that makes its opinion more or less clear.)

And yes, there is an overarching opinion in the article: by now, I'm convinced copyright assignment (CA) is a poor idea in just about all cases; it just makes the power relationships too lopsided. (There is an irony here: once upon a time, I thought there were circumstances where CA could be a useful thing, and I started a pro-assignment meme in one organization where I worked; later, as I saw how the idea was playing out, I ended up devoting quite some energy trying to shoot down the meme.) When it comes to companies, the risks of CA are by now pretty evident. What became clearer to me as I wrote the article is that CA also has risks—different risks—when it comes to assigning to a nonprofit. The article was pretty much the final nail in the coffin holding my belief that CA can be useful in some circumstances.

And thanks for your earlier point "But, there is no question that the work is easier if the non-profit that seeks to enforce holds an overwhelming majority of the copyrights." It's an important data point that does need to weighed in the mix. Still, for me the balance now falls against CA.

journalism, news and opinions

Posted Dec 31, 2012 20:54 UTC (Mon) by bkuhn (subscriber, #58642) [Link]

@mkerrisk, I do think your article marked your opinions as opinions clearly. Elsewhere in the thread, there has been some discussion of journalism neutrality, whether it's a false notion, etc. I generally think most LWN pieces are opinion pieces, and I just feel it's important to make it clear that they are. I think LWN is a great publication nonetheless. I enjoy reading all the opinions stated here :).

Many of us in the USA are raised to believe that journalism is somehow neutral. I think others who have noted the fallacies of that notion have good points. I admit that I grew up in the USA so I have a cultural expectation to see news as neutral and opinions labeled specifically as such. But that's just a cultural convention, admittedly, but I've got that cultural convention wrapped up in what I think of when I see the word “journalism”.

Anyway, your article was indeed well-researched, and I've already stated elsewhere in the thread where I disagree with some of your opinions.

GnuTLS, copyright assignment, and GNU project governance

Posted Jan 7, 2013 10:19 UTC (Mon) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link] (1 responses)

Doesn't it also very much depend on HOW the CA is done? Like the FLA KDE has - http://ev.kde.org/rules/fla.php - I can see no issues with that.

GnuTLS, copyright assignment, and GNU project governance

Posted Jan 7, 2013 12:01 UTC (Mon) by micka (subscriber, #38720) [Link]

I see no issue either... provided it's optional and you can contribute without doing it (if I understood correctly what I read).

GnuTLS, copyright assignment, and GNU project governance

Posted Jan 17, 2013 14:34 UTC (Thu) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link]

>I'm convinced copyright assignment (CA) is a poor idea in just about all cases

I doubt anyone's even reading this now it's been a few weeks, but I would appreciate it if 'copyright assignment' is *never* shortened to 'CA'.

The reason for this is that 'CA' also stands for 'contributor agreement' (or similar), which is something that can't be distinguished in context, as the context in which you might use either term is essentially the same - and the meaning is similar.

It leads to the two different things being frequently conflated, in precisely the discussions where the difference between them is the most important.