t-mouse.el copyright assignment

t-mouse.el copyright assignment

[Glenn Morris]

How did lisp/t-mouse.el get installed with no copyright assignment
from Rubini on file?

;; Copyright (C) 1994,1995 Alessandro Rubini <rubini@linux.it>
;;               parts are by Ian T Zimmermann <itz@rahul.net>, 1995,1998
;; Copyright (C) 2006
;; Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Re: t-mouse.el copyright assignment

[Nick Roberts]

 > How did lisp/t-mouse.el get installed with no copyright assignment
 > from Rubini on file?
 > 
 > ;; Copyright (C) 1994,1995 Alessandro Rubini <rubini@linux.it>
 > ;;               parts are by Ian T Zimmermann <itz@rahul.net>, 1995,1998
 > ;; Copyright (C) 2006
 > ;; Free Software Foundation, Inc.

There was a private thread (Subject: t-mouse.el) between myself, RMS and
Alessandro Rubini (around 2005-01-05).  Alessandro said that he had no problems
with t-mouse.el being included and the main difficulty was tracking down Ian T
Zimmerman (actually one n as at start of t-mouse.el).  The FSF clerk contacted
me to say that he had an assignment for Ian in February 2006 (I've lost that
communication) and I committed the file shortly afterwards.

I have no way of checking who has made copyright assignments for Emacs but I'm
surprised Alessandro doesn't have one as his name appears as a developer
for Emacs on the Savannah website:
http://savannah.gnu.org/project/memberlist.php?group=emacs

How can that be?

-- 
Nick                                           http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob

Re: t-mouse.el copyright assignment

[Glenn Morris]

Nick Roberts wrote:

> Zimmerman (actually one n as at start of t-mouse.el). The FSF clerk
> contacted me to say that he had an assignment for Ian in February
> 2006 (I've lost that communication) and I committed the file shortly
> afterwards.

Yes, I can see that assignment:

    EMACS   Ian Zimmerman   USA, 1962       2006-02-29
    Assigns Past Changes and t-mouse.el
    Ian@buug.org, Itz@disorder.primate.net

> I have no way of checking who has made copyright assignments for
> Emacs but I'm surprised Alessandro doesn't have one as his name
> appears as a developer for Emacs on the Savannah website:
> http://savannah.gnu.org/project/memberlist.php?group=emacs
>
> How can that be?

I have no idea. This returns nothing:

  grep -i rubini copyright.list

Nor are there any appropriate matches for "aless".

Re: t-mouse.el copyright assignment

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz>
> Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2006 09:11:13 +1300
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> I'm surprised Alessandro doesn't have one as his name appears as a
> developer for Emacs on the Savannah website:
> http://savannah.gnu.org/project/memberlist.php?group=emacs
> 
> How can that be?

Having an assignment is not a requirement for becoming a member of the
project.

Given your information about the email conversation, I'd guess that
Rubini's name is not in copyright.list due to some clerical error.

Re: t-mouse.el copyright assignment

[Nick Roberts]

 > Having an assignment is not a requirement for becoming a member of the
 > project.

I guess most members have write access to the repository so I it would be
unusual.

 > Given your information about the email conversation, I'd guess that
 > Rubini's name is not in copyright.list due to some clerical error.

Maybe he has a blanket assignment for all FSF projects somewhere, if that's
possible.

Clearly you don't want to put copyright.list on the Internet but why not have a
CGI form on Savannah for each project where you can type in a person's
name/e-mail address to get confirmation as to whether someone has an assignment
for that project?

-- 
Nick                                           http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob

Re: t-mouse.el copyright assignment

[Richard Stallman]

    Clearly you don't want to put copyright.list on the Internet but why not have a
    CGI form on Savannah for each project where you can type in a person's
    name/e-mail address to get confirmation as to whether someone has an assignment
    for that project?

I will ask our sysadmins to work on this.

Re: t-mouse.el copyright assignment

[Richard Stallman]

    Having an assignment is not a requirement for becoming a member of the
    project.

For FSF copyright packages, normally it is a requirement, so something
is strange here.

Re: t-mouse.el copyright assignment

[Richard Stallman]

It is indeed an anomaly that we installed this without an assignment
by Rubini on file.  Maybe his work was covered by an employer's
assignment.  I will ask him what happened.