Re: Copyright assignment

[Sander Vesik <sander_traveling yahoo co uk>]

 --- Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com> wrote: 
> Hello,
> 
> > In general, having say sign five legal letters to be able to hack on all parts
> of
> > desktop would be rather limiting. So really, it would be nice if the general
> policy
> > was that such assignment requirements are and contiunue to be very much
> > unacceptable. Foundation getting its act together and offering a way to assign
> > copyrights to itself would also help to remove problems with the single
> assignment
> > related concern GNOME should be concewrned about, that is licencing integrity. 
> > 
> > Having a futuire written policy of "there is no copyright assignment needed or
> such
> > will be assigned to the foundation" would be good.
> 
> Various companies that fund work might have different reasons to keep
> copyright ownership over their code.  OpenOffice will likely continue
> to require copyright assignment, so will Evolution, so will Real and as
> a strategy to get folks to open source their technologies, I will
> personally continue to encourage companies to open source software and
> ask for copyright assignment as a way of keeping a bit of a leverage.
> 
> Not the ideal situation, but in the past it has opened the doors for
> more free software to be available.
> 
> Is it a problem to sign five pieces of paper to get your code
> contributed?  Very likely, but how many people are practically involved
> in all of these projects in a day-to-day basis?
> 

In general - sure, having N number of copyright assignments is not a problem. The
situation would change if somebody proposed four additional desktop components that
required copyright assignment. That would suck. Tracking down whetver somebody has a
copyright assignemnt signed before you can commit their patch is a real PITA for
both sides and doesn't really help (yes, i've done that a lot).


> I do not believe it is as problematic as people are making it to be.
> 

Difference of general vs specific (gnome) case?

> Miguel.
>  


	
	
		
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