Re: [SUMMARY] #9 [[bbb:OrgMeetup]] on Wed, July 10, 19:00 UTC+3

["Thomas S. Dye" <tsd@tsdye.online>]

Aloha Suhail,

Suhail Singh <suhailsingh247@gmail.com> writes:

> Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net> writes:
>
>> https://list.orgmode.org/orgmode/87ppydmigz.fsf@gmail.com/t/#u
>
> Thank you for that reference.  I also found a reference on 
> lwn.net:
> <https://lwn.net/Articles/543339/>.
>
> The article made an interesting observation, and one that I 
> didn't know
> to be true:
>
> #+begin_quote
>   But anybody who has signed such agreement might want to be 
>   aware that
>   the FSF thinks it owns their changes, regardless of whether 
>   they have
>   been publicly posted or explicitly submitted for inclusion. 
>   One could
>   argue that entirely private changes made by a signatory to 
>   that
>   agreement are, despite being seen by nobody else, owned by the
>   FSF. Even an entirely separate function written in Emacs Lisp 
>   —
>   something which is not necessarily a derived work based on 
>   Emacs and
>   which thus might not be required to be distributed under the 
>   GPL —
>   might be subject to a claim of ownership by the FSF, at least 
>   until
>   Richard has a chance to "think about" the situation. That may 
>   be a bit
>   more than some signatories thought they were agreeing to.
> #+end_quote
>
> This may be off-topic, but I figured readers of this mailing 
> list might
> find the above interesting (assuming it is still FSF's stance on 
> the
> topic).

From my perspective, the quote is confused about the concept of 
"ownership".

IMHO, it is helpful to distinguish a right of property--a claim 
that others can be excluded from the use or enjoyment of 
something--and a right of person--a claim that one cannot be 
excluded from the use or enjoyment of something.

Ownership is often analyzed as a bundle of rights; in these cases 
full ownership means establishment of a property right.

The FSF strives to establish rights of person in software code, so 
that we all can use and enjoy it however we want, with the 
restriction that we cannot exclude others from the same use and 
enjoyment.  With the distinction between a right of property and a 
right of person in mind, it is clear that FSF does not claim 
ownership.

hth,
Tom

-- 
Thomas S. Dye
https://tsdye.online/tsdye