Re: Assignment overview (again)

[phillip.lord@russet.org.uk (Phillip Lord)]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ 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. ]]]
>
>   > > So, the FSF could ask at time of copyright assignment papers which
>   > > details people are happy with being public.
>
> In principle, I see nothing wrong with this.  But I don't want to ask
> our staff to do this extra work.  They are supposed to notify the
> contributor immediately when they record the signed papers, and the
> contributor can report this immediately if he wants to.

Sure, but at the moment, for example, if I want to bring a package into
Emacs I have to contact all contributors, to check whether they have
assignments. This can be cut down by checking which contributions are
trivial, or no longer in the code base, but it's still creates a lot of
noise.

And I have no ability to check whether the contributors are actually
correct in what they say (i.e. their employer disclaimer may have run
out).

So, to check these things, I have to mail assign@gnu. For dash.el, this
involved talking to around 10 people. Other packages have many more (151
for cider for instance).

My question. Are you sure this is extra work for FSF staff? It might be
less.

Phil