Re: Copyright assignment

[Elijah P Newren <newren math utah edu>]

On Wed, 2004-08-04 at 07:11 -0600, Andreas J. Guelzow wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-08-04 at 02:55, Rui Miguel Seabra wrote:
> > On Mon, 2004-08-02 at 14:09 -0400, Miguel de Icaza wrote:

> > > We want to keep the copyright for various reasons:
> > > 	* We can relicense the code to someone on proprietary terms.
> > >	  * It allows us to build proprietary features if we choose to.
> > 
> > This two are reason enough for not wanting to take even a slight look at
> > mono.
> 
> In this whole discussion, this is surely the most important point. 

I disagree entirely.  If you argue that we can't allow this, then you're
also arguing that we can't allow a project that is under the BSD license
(or MIT/X or similar) to be included in the Gnome D&DP--because such a
project could also be made proprietary.  I totally disagree with that
stance.  If you don't want to contribute to such a project, that's your
choice, but I think it's totally unreasonable that BSD and MIT licensed
projects should not be considered for inclusion in the Gnome desktop and
platform.  Besides, as Fernando pointed out, we do have a precedent for
required copyright assignment (libart_lgpl).

As Jeff previously stated, I think we do need to worry about required
copyright assignment becoming the norm among Gnome projects because that
could mean discouraging new developers.  (It would have kept me out of
the community, since I started as a casual observer and just wanted to
contribute a little time to one or two projects--and although signing
one paper might not be much, having to sign many papers for several
different companies or individuals would have just sent me elsewhere)

So, I think we need a way to discourage required copyright assignment
from becoming the norm, but I personally see no problem with required
copyright assignment being used for a couple projects.

Elijah