To: gnu-arch-users@gnu.org
Subject: Re: [Gnu-arch-users] GNU copyright assignment
References: <87vfd5xhe0.fsf@flame.org> <20041020214600.GA624@merconline.com>
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	<200410252004.i9PK4Pw8066415@xl2.seyza.com>
	<20041026000504.C2FA6B7E50@comet.merconline.com>
Organization: The XEmacs Project
From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 13:02:46 +0900
In-Reply-To: <20041026000504.C2FA6B7E50@comet.merconline.com> (James
	Blackwell's message of "Mon, 25 Oct 2004 20:05:04 -0400")
Message-ID: <877jpew2hl.fsf@tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
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>>>>> "James" == James Blackwell <jblack@merconline.com> writes:

    James> But that other 15%... What are you going to do with it? 
    James> Sure, you'll be able to get plenty of people to sign legal
    James> copyright transfer forms (at least if you pay for the
    James> shipping).

Many projects have made this transition.  I don't see why Tom won't do
what such maintainers normally do:

1. He asks for assignments.  If he doesn't get them,
2. He asks for volunteers to reimplement.  If he doesn't get them,
3. He asks himself to reimplement.  If he refuses,
4. He pulls the code out.

There's an alternative to (2) for contributions that are big enough,
which is to negotiate an alternative deal.  That presumably would be
done by the FSF.

I don't understand why you're worrying about this issue.  (Well, I
guess in step 3 Tom is talking to himself, so that's a little
worrying.  :-)  Tom rewrote the whole larch deal in C in a period of a
couple months; he can compute the downside of the assignment policy,
he's said "it's minor"---so why don't you just take him at his word?
The code will remain GPL and available to all throughout this process;
it's not like the FSF will issue an SCO-style "pay-royalties-or-
destroy-all-copies" demand.

I have my issues with assignment to the FSF, as you might guess, but
if Tom wants to do it, it's clearly the right thing to do (though it
is 99% political and 1% "professionalism" IMO), and it will work out
fine.

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.


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