Re: Future licence suggestions (was : License problem in Ubuntu Desktop Guide)

[Yavor Doganov <yavor doganov org>]

karderio wrote:
> 
> Would it not be a good idea to assign copyright to the FSF or GNOME
> foundation anyhow ? Surely some point in the future will require a
> licence change, which would seem impossible without this...

That's a good thing.  Only the copyright holder can change the license
so if it is FSF, you have the assurance that it won't be changed to a
non-copyleft license that doesn't protect users' freedom.  With the
licenses published by FSF requiring permission for upgrading is not
necessary -- e.g. if the license is GPLv2 or later and GPLv3 goes out,
you may publish your next release under "GPLv3 or later" w/o asking
the FSF.

Assigning copyright to the FSF has many advantages.  First, it is much
easier and more effective for the FSF to deal with license
violations (claims from several copyright holders are weak in
general), they have the resources, knowledge and everything necessary
to do that.  Besides, if someone sues you for using a patented
algorithm or copyright infringement you'll have to deal with a lot of
unpleasant papers, lawyers, courts, etc.  Last, but not least, an evil
doer will think a *lot* before commencing a lawsuit against FSF, while
he may easily do it if the defendant is Karderio or Yavor Doganov.

Since the current copyright system is unfair and wrong, the idea is
FSF to act as a stock copyright holder and "owner" (in quotes, because
the idea of ownership is wrong) for most of the GNU system.  Since
many developers are selfish and do not fully understand the goals of
the Free Software Movement, there's a lot of free software that has
thousands of copyright holders.  This may be even harmful -- consider
a project that is licensed "GPLv2 only" and the present developers
cannot find all past contributors in order to change the license.
Such program will be isolated in, let's say, 5 or 10 years.

Basically, what we want, at least what I want, is give away our work
to the society with the guarantee that it will always remain free, and
without having to worry about the legal consequences that at some
moment may ruin our lives (for example, if the proprietary empire
begins massive evil actions against our community).  This is best
achieved when licensing our work under GPL/LGPL/FDL and assigning
copyright to the Free Software Foundation.