Re: Basic legal question: Publication of a fix to psgml

["Andreas Röhler" <andreas.roehler@easy-emacs.de>]

Am 03.04.2013 19:04, schrieb B. T. Raven:
> Die Wed Apr 03 2013 07:03:40 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) Andreas
> Röhler <andreas.roehler@easy-emacs.de> scripsit:
>
>> Am 03.04.2013 10:29, schrieb Bastien:
>>> Hi Andreas,
>>>
>>> Andreas Röhler <andreas.roehler@easy-emacs.de> writes:
>>>
>>>> CA, as we learned, is partly privately negotiated.
>>>
>>> Not to my knowledge.
>>>
>>
>> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-04/msg00066.html
>>
>> BTW experienced that proceeding already years ago, which is just polite
>> and correct as such.
>>
>>> The copyright assignment is signed by contributors.  I'm not aware of
>>> any negociations, and I'd be surprised to learn that there are private
>>> negociations.
>>>
>>>> To evaluate the legal state of different parts in Emacs wrt CA will
>>>> need one or more lawyers.
>>>
>>> This suggests that the copyright status of Emacs is uncertain.
>>
>> Law and legal stats differ in theory and reality.
>> In theory more laws define more cases and should provide more security.
>> In reality the realm of possible interpretation is expanded too.
>>
>>>
>>> I hope you understand it is quite a serious statement and requires
>>> some evidence.
>>>
>>> The copyright status for code in Org's code is very clear, and I think
>>> this is also the case for the copyright status of the rest of Emacs.
>>> I sometimes get impatient when I have to wait for the FSF Copyright
>>> Clerk to handle new copyright assignments for a new contributor, but
>>> I know he has a lot of work and he's doing a great job.
>>>
>>
>> To know the copyright status as such --as assignments may differ-- you
>> must read assignment by assignment, evaluate and understand the diffs
>> correctly -
>> which is absurd as IMHO the whole CA arts.
>>
>> BTW German law --Urheberrechtsgesetz-- for example declares non-valid
>> such copyright assignments - even if signed.
>> Will a US-court accept CA from a German, when german law declares CA
>> possible?
>
> Your English is so good that I can't tell whether you are a native
> speaker or not.

Thanks! FWIW ;)

  Did you mean to write "if (wenn) German law declares CA
> IMpossible"?

yep, sorry, a typo.

> I'm sure the FSF's lawyers know about the status of German
> law, don't they?

Don't know. It was just an example. What about japanese or chinese law when negotiating with it citizens?
Just wanted to point at the costs and risks when entering that procedure.

> In any case, donative assignments are so legally thorny
> that any discussion of them should probably be limited to private
> communication with RMS or between/among the FSF's lawyers in camera.
>

AS the GPL works, making a success story of free software, assignment-stubborness has a kind of tragic-comic.

Not being surprised that nastiness of legal stuff corresponds with a respective style of communication:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-emacs/2013-03/msg00495.html

Anyway, as always in error too :)

Andreas

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