On Wed, 2008-02-06 at 15:35 +0100, Charles-H. Schulz wrote:
> but when it comes to Gnome it would be quite surprizing to have no
> copyright assignment.
For the main, copyright assignment has been the exception, rather than
the norm. Gnome, KDE/Koffice, the Linux Kernel, Wine, and thousands of
others; none of them require assignment. Of course, the FSF projects,
glibc, gcc etc. have historically required complete assignment - OTOH,
these are not viewed as the most dynamic and successful projects, and of
course the FSF is starkly different from a for-profit entity as we know.
Clearly people pushing assignment tend to trot out another list, but the
wider picture is clear.
IMHO the recent drift towards assignment reflects the growing interest
from corporations in Free software, and some of the conflicts and
problems opening up the source of proprietary products. Sun / OO.o just
happens to be a trail-blazer here.
> Anyway, it does not change the rest of what we discussed (Mono, other
> Novell software, FSF, Mozilla, etc.)
It interests me too that you think Mozilla is a copyright assignment
project; http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/form.html - if you read their
form, you will see it includes a certification of origin, an acceptance
that contributed code will be NPL/MPL and so on. Where is the all
encompasing copyright assignment ?
I was surprised to (not) see that myself, inasmuch that they have an
independent organisation, and apparently a sensible structure that could
let them have such an impartial steward; and I too was (mis?)-lead to
believe that this was necessary for dual licensing (MPL/GPL eg.).
Thanks,
Michael.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot
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