Re: Regarding copyright assignment to FSF

[Michael Banck <mbanck@gmx.net>]

Hi,

On Sat, Aug 14, 2021 at 02:19:12PM +0200, Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:
> Michael Banck <mbanck@gmx.net> writes:
> 
> > I don't mind that, but I also think the Hurd is not a tactical FSF asset
> > anymore that needs to be kept under tight control. The FSF has enough
> > copyright in the Hurd that it can enforce it whenever it likes, even if
> > other people's copyrighted code (as is already the case with the pfinet
> 
> I wouldn’t be so sure about that.
> 
> 1. Without copyright assignment of all code involved, enforcement
>    becomes much harder.

I don't think "much harder" can be quantified in a meaningful way,
seeing how parts of the Hurd aren't under the FSF copyright at this
point, anyway.

> 2. The Hurt still provides capabilities other OS’es don’t — while
>    maintaining POSIX compatibility. We’ve seen audacity basically
>    being taken over by a company in the past months, so the danger of
>    losing Hurd to proprietarization rather got bigger than smaller.

Nobody proposes that the FSF relicenses the Hurd to a non-copyleft
license before relinquishing the copyright assignment mandate, so I
don't see how the Hurd continueing to be under a GPLv2+ license will
ever be able to be taken proprietary.

I'm not going to respond further on this thread, this is starting to get
off-topic really quick and if there are further things to be discussed,
gnu-system-discuss or whatever other mailing list is likely the better
place.


Michael