Re: Copyright assignment policy

[Александър Шопов <ash contact bg>]

В 20:30 +0900 на 12.03.2008 (ср), James Henstridge написа:
> On 12/03/2008, Александър Шопов <ash contact bg> wrote:
> > > IANALTTL (I am not a lawyer, talk to Luis), but my understanding
> >  > is that copyright assignment requires signing a piece of paper to
> >  > be valid.  I don't think private email exchanges cut it, legally.
> >
> > I am unsure as well.
> >
> >  Luis, could you elaborate on this?
> 
> If this is a case of people just putting "Copyright FSF" on files and
> nothing more then this is harmful.
Well, you should take into account that the "copyright to FSF" clause gets generated by tools,
people copy the clause and actually people usually put exactly that.
Retaining copyright has been somewhat of an exception.

> If a situation came up where it was necessary to defend the copyrights
> on those files and the FSF couldn't prove that they own them it would
> be a problem.
If it came to that, logs provide the names of contributors.

> The most important thing to do is make sure that the copyright
> messages are accurate.  If there is a problem, at least there will be
> a chance to contact the copyright holders (the same is true in the
> case of license changes).  This goes for everything: translations,
> code, documentation, artwork, etc.
Sigh.
Is there a place where this is explained?

Kind regards:
al_shopov