Re: Another job for the Gnome Foundation ?

[jg pa dec com (Jim Gettys)]

I'm in the: "don't put all eggs in one basket" camp.  Any organization
can be subverted with time, and having stakeholders outside makes it much
easier to get problems like what happend with X fixed.  Even organizations
as reasonable as the X Consortium can end up getting closed down, and
their legal successors not have the same morals of the original.  This
is why I believe putting too much of the copyright with sole ownership
anywhere is a bad mistake: the owner can cause so much trouble.

The other thing I note is that requiring assignment would cause many 
potential donations to not happen, as the owner may have other needs for 
the code, and be free to issue the code under other copyrights (the X 
consortium required a copyright with no more restrictions than the original 
copyright for any code distributed by the X Consortium).

The X Consortium did (as does XFree86) require a letter asserting ownership
before redistributing any code.  This is mostly to make sure that the
copyright owner has followed its own internal processes in making the code
available.  This amount of process is absolutely necessary.
				- Jim

--
Jim Gettys
Technology and Corporate Development
Compaq Computer Corporation
jg@pa.dec.com