BSD license vs. Evolution assigment (was Re: Copyright assignment)

[danilo gnome org (Danilo Šegan)]

Yesterday at 22:20, Elijah P. Newren wrote (on d-d-l):
>
>> With all due respect - but this is UTTER TOTAL CRACK. The situation between 
>> a project that is based on BSD / MIT licence (like say libxml unless i'm
>> misremembering what Daniel did with the licencing situation) and a copyright
>> assignment giving a way for proprietary versions of code are entirely different.
>
> Entirely different?  No, it isn't.  I admit that there is one difference
> (anyone can make the BSD code proprietary, whereas only one entity can
> make the code proprietary with copyright assignment).  

In a sense, this is exactly the point.  With BSD-licensed code, you
get a sense of trust — there's no single "privileged" entity, so the
company who contributed most tells you that you're as good as they
are: you can make *their* code proprietary, in the same way they can
make yours.  So, there's a symmetry.

With pure GPL (without assignment), there's also a symmetry: each
contributor is able to later relicense code they wrote under different
license, but they cannot relicense stuff they didn't write.

With GPL + assignment, we get many risks.  So far, I have developed
enough trust only in FSF, perhaps Gnome Foundation (but it doesn't yet
accept copyright assignment).

Of course, none of this should block Evolution from getting included
in the desktop: as soon as we get enough significant contributors not
willing to sign copyright form, we'd probably get a fork we'd used in
desktop.

I'm sorry this discussion never moved off d-d-l, where it is clearly
out-of-place.  I won't respond to d-d-l threads any more.

Cheers,
Danilo