Re: Licensing and copyright

[Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>]

    [2] In the event of the FSF going bust (after a court battle for example), the 
    judge may not be bound to the FSF contracts. In certain circumstances 
    (terrorism, war, the FSF going bust, etc...), a judge may be able to rewrite 
    the FSF contracts and sell its assets to the most offering company.

We designed the FSF copyright assignment contract with lawyers' advice
specifically to protect the free status of the software even in the
case where the FSF went bankrupt.

A bankruptcy court can excuse an organization from its contractual
obligations in some ways.  However, it cannot rewrite a copyright
license to give the organization rights that were never conveyed to
it.
    I see no problem in Japanese citizen assigning rights to the FSF Japan, 
    Russian citizen assigning rights to the FSF Russia, etc...

    Can we agree on that?

We don't do it this way because it would make no sense.  Part of the
purpose of getting copyright assignments is to have just one copyright
holder.

It is entirely acceptable for the developers of a GNU package to keep
the copyright.  If the developers of a part of GNOME would rather
retain the copyright, they can do so.  If the developers would like to
have the FSF enforce the GPL for them, we are ready to do so, but they
must give us what is necessary for us to do it effectively.