Re: Including ESS with Emacs

[Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>]

Alex Branham wrote:
> Is there a process for figuring out who exactly needs to sign the FSF
> copyright paperwork? Is it just authors of the current code according to
> git-blame, or everyone who's contributed 15 lines of code, or something
> else?

If we accept just the latest version of ESS, we'd need permission only from 
people who have made significant contributions to that version. We wouldn't need 
permission from people who made past contributions that haven't survived into 
the current version.

Unfortunately, though, the question of "who contributed to this line of code?" 
cannot in general be answered by "look at the git blame output for this line", 
as the line may have most recently been touched by person X even though its main 
author was person Y earlier.

I don't know how many contributors we're talking about here, but one possible 
option is to ask for permissions from everybody, and then if you can't get 
permission from persons P, Q and R then you look at every commit that they made 
and see whether any significant part or those commits have survived into the 
current version. If some bits of code have survived, take them out or rewrite 
them from scratch (ideally via a cleanroom approach).

> Does it make sense for you to email
> me the form and then when I reach out I can include the form with my
> email?

Sure, here's the form I usually use. Other forms might apply depending on your 
contributors' concerns.

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnulib.git/plain/doc/Copyright/request-assign.future