Re: Yorba Foundation looking to pass on copyrights

[Josh Triplett <josh joshtriplett org>]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 04:55:49PM -0400, Adam Dingle wrote:
> As some of you know, I founded Yorba, a free software non-profit based in
> San Francisco that was active from 2009-2015 and developed a few popular
> programs for GNOME including the Shotwell photo manager and the Geary email
> client, both of which now live in GNOME git.  These programs are copyrighted
> by Yorba and a few external contributors and are licensed under the LGPL.
>
> Yorba has run out of funding and is winding down - in fact nobody has worked
> there since around April 2015.  We now need to shut down the foundation
> (which is a California non-profit corporation), but legally we can't do so
> while it still holds any assets including the copyrights on its software,
> which are considered intellectual property.
>
> We'd love to find some other free software organization that we can pass our
> copyrights on to.  We would sell them for a nominal fee.  In theory the
> copyright recipient could defend the LGPL licensing of these programs if
> necessary (though I think the likelihood of such a necessity is low).
>
> My understanding is that GNOME itself does not hold copyrights.  Is anyone
> aware of any other free software organization that might be willing and able
> to receive our copyrights?  Thanks -

You might consider the Free Software Foundation (FSF), Software in the Public
Interest (SPI), or the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC).

- Josh Triplett