Re: Copyright assignment

[Ryan McDougall <NQG24419 nifty com>]

On Thu, 2004-05-08 at 14:52 +0200, Christoffer Olsen wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, 2004-08-05 at 05:35 -0700, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > <quote who="Danilo Šegan">
> > 
> > > Thanks, that pretty much clears it up.  I, for one, would never want to
> > > assign copyright on anything I may (potentially) do on Mono or Evolution
> > > code to Novell if this is the case: when I write something as free
> > > software, I want it to *remain* free.
> > 
> > Note that your changes, as released by Novell under the GPL, will *remain*
> > free. Novell may do non-free things with them, but your contributions to
> > Evolution - as released under the GPL - are still out there, under the GPL.
> > 
> 
> That Novell can do non-free things with your code, concerns many (of
> course). When the GPL is chosen as a licence for a project, the author
> or contributors want the code to be free, under all circumstances, which
> would not be the case. And as far as I can see, Novell is free to
> discontinue development on f.i. the free Evolution at any time, and
> continue to make this software under a proprietary licence. It depends
> how ideological you are - do you want to worry about this, or not?

Are you suggesting that Novell is obligated to continue developing Evo
because its GPL?

> Sorry for keeping a tedious discussion alive, but I've said what I need
> to say :-)

Everyone has that right, but AFAICT this line of argument is becoming
circular, and thus threatens to become only noise. Can we stick to
solving the problem at hand? What is your solution? I think we've had
enough theory.

(I don't want to be the jerk who brow-beats people into staying on
topic. I'm not a jerk! :))

My solution: assign copyright to Foundation, Foundation assigns to
Novell. One set of paperwork. Foundation can protect copyrights its
still owns. Discuss.

> 
> Best wishes,
> Christoffer

Cheers,
Ryan