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Re: GPL - was: Re: EB40A port is done!


On Thu, Jul 18, 2002 at 01:10:00PM -0700, David N. Welton wrote:
> Peter Vandenabeele <peter@mind.be> writes:
> 
> > On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 05:50:14PM -0700, David N. Welton wrote:
> > > Doug Fraser <dfraser@photuris.com> writes:
> 
> > > > Even if you contribute directly to www.gnu.org you need to
> > > > perform a copywrite assignment and possibly provide a disclaimer
> > > > signed by your employer.
> 
> > > > http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain_7.html#SEC7
> 
> > > > So, no, simply having GPL'ed the code does not absolve the
> > > > maintainer from this responsibility. Having non-assigned
> > > > copywrites poisons GPL'ed code.
> 
> > > Well, things like Linux are probably defensible, despite having
> > > lots of 'poisoned' code.  The bigger problem, maybe, for an
> > > organization like GNU, is the possibility of changing the
> > > copyright in the future.
> 
> > With all respect, I believe this to be incorrect.
> 
> What, exactly, is incorrect with what I wrote?

In the FSF "Copyright Papers" guideline, the statement of needing a 
Copyright Assignment to FSF is a request (not a hard condition) for 
packages that are maintained and defended by the FSF. I don't think 
it is a requirement for the GPL system at large to work. Any 
Copyright holder could at some time decide to alone, or together 
with others, defend his rights in court. If required, at that time,
they could still transfer their rights to a central ad-hoc group for 
that purpose, but with a clear limited goal at that time.

Having non-assigned Code does not poison GPL code in the sense that
it does not stand in the way of letting use the code by anyone, or 
defending the rights of the original authors of the code.

[...]

> > One of the elements of such balance seems to me that contributors
> > that are not associated with the central, maintaining organization
> > need to have the right to set up at any time a separate CVS server
> > where they can submit patches and build a forked version, in case
> > they do not agree with the policy set forward by the central
> > maintaining organization (especially if that organization would
> > request Copyright Assignment as a pre-condition for allowing the
> > patch in the central CVS server).
> 
> I think that you can always do that with the code you have now.  It's
> under the GPL.  What you don't have is the guarantee that the code
> will always be GPL in the future.

On one hand, from the current GPL version, you can always derive future
GPL versions and you have unlimited rights to fork. Alternatively, an 
entity that holds Copyright to a large part of the code could at any time 
start developing a forked version with a different (typical proprietary)
license (e.g. Kaffe / KaffePro). That is where (if well done) there 
could be an efficient collaboration between business and Free Software 
development. But the conditions of such a way of working should be clear 
upfront and balanced. I believe that a blanket, unconditional Copyright 
Assignment to an organisation is not optimally balanced, since it does 
not cover enough the interests of the Free Software developers.

Peter

> -- 
> David N. Welton
>    Consulting: http://www.dedasys.com/
>      Personal: http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/
> Free Software: http://www.dedasys.com/freesoftware/
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> 
> -- 
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