From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.ciao.gmane.io!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Why are so many great packages not trying to get included in GNU Emacs? Date: Thu, 07 May 2020 15:44:24 +0300 Message-ID: <83tv0rkj87.fsf@gnu.org> References: <9mmFgzvrBwjt_n_VJyaJdXINraNi5HsGpwq-0MLeKiJA7kG2BQA4uywrzjyz7lpRS0OZDpjEi8lspOKYUA7P_QsODsDew_8nbH960G55fmY=@protonmail.com> <97DA7804-F647-4A1D-B8E0-AFFE7A324C64@gmail.com> <87d07xamrg.fsf@ericabrahamsen.net> <878silajdl.fsf@ericabrahamsen.net> <87tv18pyh4.fsf@russet.org.uk> <874ksshyl7.fsf@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="ciao.gmane.io:159.69.161.202"; logging-data="28177"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: casouri@gmail.com, rms@gnu.org, eric@ericabrahamsen.net, emacs-devel@gnu.org, monnier@iro.umontreal.ca, ndame@protonmail.com, phillip.lord@russet.org.uk To: =?utf-8?Q?K=C3=A9vin?= Le Gouguec Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Thu May 07 14:45:54 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1jWfuU-0007E0-1Y for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Thu, 07 May 2020 14:45:54 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:38318 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jWfuT-0002Vd-3x for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Thu, 07 May 2020 08:45:53 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:48548) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jWftS-0001qZ-Ej for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 07 May 2020 08:44:50 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:49573) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jWftR-0007hN-4K; Thu, 07 May 2020 08:44:49 -0400 Original-Received: from [176.228.60.248] (port=2664 helo=home-c4e4a596f7) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.2:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:256) (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1jWftI-0008BO-Gz; Thu, 07 May 2020 08:44:41 -0400 In-Reply-To: <874ksshyl7.fsf@gmail.com> (message from =?utf-8?Q?K=C3=A9vin?= Le Gouguec on Thu, 07 May 2020 11:40:52 +0200) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:249168 Archived-At: > From: Kévin Le Gouguec > Date: Thu, 07 May 2020 11:40:52 +0200 > Cc: Yuan Fu , Richard Stallman , > Eric Abrahamsen , > Emacs developers , > Stefan Monnier , > Phillip Lord , ndame@protonmail.com > > The best assessment of copyright assignment effectiveness I know of is > Bradley Kuhn's recap of the issue in 2012[1]: > > > Simply put, the GPL violation defending lawyers have gotten more > > obsessed than ever with delay tactics. They try to raise every > > spurious issue they can think of to delay you, distract you, or > > otherwise try to avoid bringing their client into compliance with the > > terms of GPL. If you don't hold all the copyrights, they'll focus on > > that issue. For example, I had an executive of a large computer maker > > tell me that his lawyers say "copyright infringement claims are > > legally invalid unless you hold a majority of the copyrights". This > > is completely asinine and clearly incorrect in the USA, but violators > > make these arguments all the time. As another example: I was once > > deposed in a court case for 8 hours about the topic whether or not > > BusyBox's configuration files magically made Erik Andersen's > > copyrights fail to appear in the binary work. That's a spurious > > argument that I spent 8 hours refuting, yet the violator's lawyer > > again brought it up in the Court as a defense that we had to refute. > > To me that sort of suggests that copyright assignment is neither > sufficient (you still need enough resources to overcome "every spurious > issue" the defending lawyers will throw at you) nor necessary (since > Bradley considers it "asinine" to say "an infringement claim is invalid > without holding a majority of the copyrights"). Actually, Bradley's conclusion, the very next paragraph after the one you quoted, is a direct opposite of yours, AFAICT. If we are going to cite others who might have educated opinions on this matter, why not cite them more completely?