Re: Copyright assignment

[Alan Cox <alan lxorguk ukuu org uk>]

On Sul, 2004-08-08 at 13:50, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> You could argue that if its useful in more than one place, that code
> should go into a system library, X11/LGPL that everyone can use.

Your current text says "supporting files". Libraries are supporting
files. This does not answer the problem. If I submit a change to use a
library then you are requiring I submit the libraries it uses, and if
I sign the paperwork and don't own those libraries you could even
sue me for having submitted it.

> Notice that the same thing happens with any other copyright
> assignments, like the FSF: I can not include in GCC a chunk of code
> that might be genuinely useful if the copyright is not transfered to
> them and the code must be part of gcc.

Indeed - it is one of the big problems. Right now we beat the
proprietary folks in part by writing only two rather than ten of
everything (clocks, window managers and cd players excepted).

In the FSF case it isnt usually a problem because other pure free 
free software projects generally don't have a problem with FSF owned
code because the FSF is trusted and dealing with one repository of
other ownership doesn't bother people much.

Alan