From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: On Contributing To Emacs Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2021 16:23:29 -0500 Message-ID: References: <87k0fn8od1.fsf@gnus.org> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="37190"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: larsi@gnus.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Akira Kyle Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Thu Dec 30 22:24:09 2021 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 1n32u9-0009OB-3D for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Thu, 30 Dec 2021 22:24:09 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:60674 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1n32u7-0001BU-Ev for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Thu, 30 Dec 2021 16:24:07 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([209.51.188.92]:60886) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1n32tV-0000L7-II for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 30 Dec 2021 16:23:29 -0500 Original-Received: from [2001:470:142:3::e] (port=58544 helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1n32tV-000808-0S; Thu, 30 Dec 2021 16:23:29 -0500 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gnu.org; s=fencepost-gnu-org; h=Date:References:Subject:In-Reply-To:To:From: mime-version; bh=KBSgdPqqqBKKnM4JW7iJgzPhLOab2mrar54ZUdssCkc=; b=A541dBmF8ZVc Yb/Ak08/onUYXK/2yD6QA1mcDktuES2lSE23T7Yk7SbdNtSCAUDneHv7FsF4d7ZrDqFoFRYJnSYCI DqguYvuYdbP18kHvJfs21weQA3iyKFWwWz9oxIO+T0gDhOzjDXQ/SbH2azuxWk705LYs3OGAsfK4v vVY5JC2QccLERf8y9iBHF4qCQmuG0uwlkDEIqMrKqsIxgG0sXL6eM8jyimBcwz7i13SQ5uLYUaLhF NJDJSjsGOLjZIvd4CNi4J8Sk6dQhIwJm4hWQaZ26Cpt279df7SqoC98K7NdKCmGWVQjdzlWaeF/7P 1LEFdwQ0v3rFYH2shZia0A==; Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1n32tV-0007BD-4g; Thu, 30 Dec 2021 16:23:29 -0500 In-Reply-To: (message from Akira Kyle on Wed, 29 Dec 2021 17:15:17 -0700) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.29 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:283684 Archived-At: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > Indeed. Speaking from my own experience, I've been putting off getting > my assignment done because apparently, as a university student, I need > to do extra work and find the right person at my school to also sign > off on this. I was talking about the copyright assignment, but you're talking about the employer copyright disclaimer. They are needed for the same situation, but in the specifics they are completely different. The speed of processing assignments is a matter of how fast the FSF staff do that job. A couple of years ago, we made that much faster and more reliable. Obtaining the employer disclaimer is between you and your employer. The FSF staff have no way to speed that up; they can't do it for you. The employer disclaimer has nothing to do with being a student at a university. In the US, a university cannot claim copyright on a student's writings just because perse is a student. If the work is for a class, or a private project, the university has no claim, unless perse substantially uses some special facilities to do it. (Not just the internet, printers, ordinary student computing, and email accounts.) The university will give you a booklet describing this policy. The case where a university does have a claim is when the student is also an employee and the work is part of per _job_. Then it's like any other employment. We need to know that per employer does not make a legal claim to that work. That applies to you because (from what you said) you have a research job and the work you're doing on Emacs might be considered part of it. But the university doesn't have to considered it part of that job. What we do is ask the university to affirm that it does not consider your changes to Emacs to be work done for your job. Normally, the person you should discuss this with is your supervisor. A supervisor is supposed to know how to do this. If yours doesn't know, perse will at least know which office to ask. (It may be the "technology licensing office" or (yuck!) "intellectual property office" (see https://gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html).) If you show per the form the FSF staff send you, you could get this going next week. You can ask the FSF staff for advice about how to go about this, but I expect they will tell you the same thing I said here. If the university objects, then you should show the FSF staff the response you got. At that point, they can help work something out with the university. But this only rarely happens, so don't worry about it now. > I also have a question that I might as well ask here in case anyone > knows the answer: part of my funding comes from the US government and > work I publish under that funding must be exempt from copyright (i.e. > public domain). Is this then incompatible with the fsf copyright > assignment, Indeed, that is an issue. You can't assign the copyright if you don't have the copyright. (That's also the reason we need employer disclaimers.) and hence mean I cannot make contributions to such GNU > software on time I spend as part of that funding, It's not a problem at all. Instead of an assignment, you can sign something different affirming that this work is in the public domain. It's an unusual thing to do, but not difficult. The FSF staff can help you out. -- Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org) Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org) Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)