This. I'm also curious to know why is the process so bureaucratic as it is
currently. Maybe there's a legal issue or something.

On Sun, Mar 12, 2017 at 8:08 AM, Clément Pit-Claudel <cpitclaudel@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hey emacs-devel,
>
> Why is the copyright assignment process for GNU software more complex than
> other similar ones ?  I've contributed to various pieces of free software
> in the past, and in most cases (except for Apache) the assignment process
> was little more than a click of a button, possibly followed by an email.
> For Emacs, on the other hand, one needs to send an email to emacs-devel to
> get an off-list copy of a text-based form, then send the completed form to
> assign@gnu, then wait for a PDF (which mentions a monetary transaction of
> $1 that never actually happens), then electronically sign the form using
> PGP (possibly with an entirely new PGP key), then email it back and wait
> for confirmation.
>
> Is there anything specific to Emacs that requires the process to be this
> complicated?  For example, could the entire process not be automated?
> Ideally new contributors would fill a web form on gnu.org/emacs, sign
> with their mouse at the bottom of that form, and confirm their email adress
> by clicking a link in an email.
>
> The existing process could remain in place for e.g. company-wide
> assignments, but for the common case of applying a patch to an ELPA
> package, wouldn't this make things much nicer?  If this can't be done, then
> could we at least automate the part that generates the PDF form, and the
> part that checks the signature, so as to eliminate the copyright assignment
> delay?
>
> Thanks!
> Clément.
>
>