Re: copyrights assignments

[Ali Abdin <aliabdin aucegypt edu>]

* Bart Decrem (bart@eazel.com) wrote at 12:00 on 22/07/00:
> We talked about this briefly at the last steering committee meeting and I
> think there was consensus, but I can't remember what the consensus was.  Did
> we want to encourage people to assign copyrights to the FSF, or to the Gnome
> Foundation, or do we not presently have an opinion on this issue?
> 
> Brian mentioned that, as corporations adopt Gnome, there'll be greater
> concern about liability issues (patent and copyright infringement) and this
> becomes a more important issue.  The Apache Software Foundation was created
> largely to encourage Apache developers to assign copyrights to the
> Foundation.  I believe that the OpenOffice Foundation requires copyright
> assignments to that foundation (but they need that for their dual-licensing
> I believe).
> 
> I don't think we necessarily need to resolve or even address that issue now.

Well - recently there was the 'SHEBA' arabic linux distro that 'appears' to
violating the GNU GPL and supposedly has a 'patent pending'.

I contacted RMS about the issue, but he told me that since the copyright isn't
assigned to them (the FSF) there was not much they could do.

Right now, it seems the copyright for much of the stuff in GNOME is just
assigned to the person who writes it, which will possibly make it more
difficult to pursue legal issues. I believe though that the situation is
possible improving since copyright is now being assigned to either Helix Code,
Eazel, or Red Hat.

I agree though that this probably not an issue for the gnome foundation (since
it has other priorities at the moment).

Regards,
Ali Abdin