From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: =?utf-8?Q?=C3=93scar_Fuentes?= Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Please explain the FSF copyright assignment thing Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2017 19:49:26 +0200 Message-ID: <87shi08bx5.fsf@wanadoo.es> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1499968233 9173 195.159.176.226 (13 Jul 2017 17:50:33 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2017 17:50:33 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/26.0.50 (gnu/linux) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Jul 13 19:50:25 2017 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1dViFq-0001fH-KC for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 13 Jul 2017 19:50:22 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:33314 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dViFt-0006rN-0b for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 13 Jul 2017 13:50:25 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:38073) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dViF8-0006r7-Rg for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 13 Jul 2017 13:49:40 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dViF5-0002ep-Qb for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 13 Jul 2017 13:49:38 -0400 Original-Received: from [195.159.176.226] (port=51049 helo=blaine.gmane.org) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dViF5-0002e5-Jh for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 13 Jul 2017 13:49:35 -0400 Original-Received: from list by blaine.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1dViEx-0007U4-3z for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 13 Jul 2017 19:49:27 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 34 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org Cancel-Lock: sha1:rx1o/B2noon9aH4EXWyZtlMDcXU= X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] [fuzzy] X-Received-From: 195.159.176.226 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 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.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:216589 Archived-At: Filipe Silva writes: This is not the correct forum for this matters, but anyway... > With the recent activity regarding RMS wishing that someone would come up > and write a replacement for magit that could be bundled inside emacs, and > give FSF the whole copyright assignment, I cannot help but be intrigued: > what good do these required copyright assignments do to the free software > community? Only the copyright holder can effectively exert the associated legal rights. > I really, really tried to understand but cannot. It's hard enough for a > community to be graced with the luck of having someone as Jonas Bernoulli > write the magit package, give away de code as GPLv3, and actually maintain > it through years. Jonas is the current lead maintaner of Magit. Before him there were other maintainers. And even before was Marius Vollmer, who is the original author and who deserves all the credit about the UI design ideas that makes Magit great. > Now you have to also sign physical papers handing the > copyright to the FSF. that makes the process so much difficult. What's the > gain? > > So what if the copyright belongs to someone else. Isn't this free software? > gplv3? don't you have the four liberties? > > Enlighten me, please. If Emacs distributes work which are not legally assigned to the FSF and some author of that work goes berserk, things can turn *very* nasty, on the legal aspect. It happened on the past.