On 04/25/2010 11:27 PM, Dave Korn wrote:
On 26/04/2010 01:12, Mark Mielke wrote:
The real reason for FSF copyright assignment is control. The FSF wants to
control GCC.
Yes. Specifically, they want to be able to enforce the GPL. Since only the
copyright holder can license code to anyone, whether under GPL or whatever
terms, FSF has to hold the copyright, or it can't sue anyone who breaches the
GPL, and therefore cannot enforce it.
If the software was truly free - and not limited use - there would be no
need to enforce it. It would be free.
mode. I don't see how this benefits me in any way. If I'm giving software
that I write to the community for "free", why do I care what they will do
with it? If I control how they can use it - it's not free. It's limited
use.
You're only looking at it from one side, that of an author. The benefits of
the GPL are primarily to users. Since all us authors are also users of
software, we should weigh up the inconveniences against the benefits.
This presumes that the benefits of truly free software are not
sufficient on their own to result in benefits for the users. There are
many non-GPL "free" software projects, that continue to be distributed
for free, without the heavy handed "enforcement" defined by the GPL. The
GPL is just one model for free software. It is not the only model, nor
it is the most "free" model.
There is value for me, as a user, in the existence of free software that
can't be restricted by proprietary acts of "enclosure". The GPL is
unashamedly a political strategy with a goal that can be seen to benefit all,
even without your needing to agree with the political stance: that goal is to
create a commons, and to make it impossible for there ever to be a tragedy of
that commons. Whether you agree about the value (social or financial) or
likelihood of success of the exercise or not, you still benefit from that
commons, under pretty much any philosophical or political stance except for
the most extreme "everything is a zero-sum game and therefore anything that
benefits anyone except me is a harm to me" viewpoints. Or so I think, anyway.
I think that other licenses exist which are both more free (less limited
use), and would provide the same sorts of value in creating a commons. I
think the creation of a commons should be about practical merit, and not
some weird copyright protection that acts like a virus in that it
infiltrates every derived software of the original software. I think
people should do the right thing because it makes sense, not because the
FSF crafted a clever way to lock people in to a certain model and never
escape from it.
So, why should you care what others will do with it? Enlightened
self-interest. You and others both benefit from the common wealth of free
software, therefore both you and others should, in theory, not want anyone to
try and hoard those benefits to themselves, because that's how tragedies of
commons arise. This is what can happen with the proprietarisation of open
source software, the GPL is a way to avoid that from happening by caring about
what others do with it, hence you should care what others do with it. You
release your software to the world because you hope people will benefit from
it, for the same reason you should continue to care what happens to it
afterward.
I have no fear of hoarding, because I believe that the merits of free
software extend beyond a legal requirement to honour a copyright
license. I believe companies generally discover that it is cheaper to
contribute back to the project than to maintain patches off stream for
extended periods of time. I believe that the users have power in
requesting that the companies provide the software under an open source
or free software license. I believe that free software has a significant
place in this world which is compelling and self evident even to greedy
self-interests. And if somebody doesn't get it, and hoards their own
copy? I don't care. I as a user, can choose to not buy their solution. I
as a user, can choose to contribute to an alternative to their solution.
So what if somebody profits from my work? Companies such as RedHat
profit from GPL work today. The copyright assignment part only goes so
far in terms of protection. Personally, I have no problem with companies
profiting from work which I have chosen to give away for free.
Referring to the people and employees who have gone through the copyright
assigment and employer disclaimers in the past and saying ("they didn't
have a problem signing") isn't evidence that the process is practical,
efficient, or acceptable. These people probably just felt they had no other
choice. If given the option of NOT doing this process, I'm sure most of
them would happily have chosen option B.
(Heh. Making arbitrary claims about how many people you suppose or not
would make a certain choice or not and what their motives were or were not is
even more spurious than using ancedotal evidence, no? It's a bit like saying
"although there is no evidence from their behaviour because they did something
else, I nonetheless assert that all these people secretly agree with me",
isn't it?)
Yes. Except - various people in this thread have suggested that a
significant number of people have not had problems, therefore, the
process cannot be that bad. I think it is far more likely that people
wish they didn't have to go through this process, and find it odd that
GCC requires it while other equal or more important projects do not
require such a process. Sure, we're guessing - but if I can't guess -
than these other people shouldn't guess either.
I think you are right about the next part except for one possible
difficulty:
I do think there's a lot of confusion though, because throughout this
discussion there has been a lot of conflation between the *assignment* and the
*disclaimer*, and I'm not sure how anyone could have a problem with the
_assignment_ that was in any way connected to their employer.
In my experience, the assignment process is simple and trivial: you email
the FSF, receive some paper documents through the snail within a couple of
weeks at the most, but if you're lucky it can be as little as a few days; you
sign them and shove them back in the post, job done. Sometimes it takes
longer, paperwork is the kind of thing that goes missing and sometimes the FSF
office is understaffed and snowed in with work and it can take weeks, but it
basically doesn't require any significant effort on your point. The vital
point that I think is missed when these two separate processes get conflated is:
*Your employer has nothing to do with this process and no say nor interest
in nor right to involvement in it.*
The assignment is a personal agreement between you as an individual and the
FSF, you agree to assign them your copyrights - not your employers'. This
part of it can be done regardless of any subsequent discussion between you and
your employers about what they claim to be their copyright and what yours,
because your position is trivially that this obviously only applies to stuff
you do validly have the copyright of, and not to anything that belongs to them.
Once they are sure that they aren't going to either lose anything that is
theirs, nor expose themselves or the firm to any kind of liability or expense
or obligation, management become vastly more amenable to persuading them to
sign the disclaimer; by formally disavowing ownership of the patches you
submit, you tell them, all they are promising is not to claim ownership of
stuff that isn't theirs and they don't even want anyway, and in so doing, you
point out to them, this *guarantees* that there will be no come-back on them
regardless what you get up to in your spare time. At that point, they're
usually *keen* to sign.
I think it is possible that some of the people who have (or have had)
trouble with the process with their employers, would find it easier if they
realised that the assignment was something they can do without anyone's
permission regardless of the terms of their employment, and subsequently
present as a fait accompli, and that at that point it then actually
facilitates getting the disclaimer from the employer, which is the only part
they have to be involved in.
The problem point for people is probably that the NDA that most
employees sign with their employer (big companies at least), usually has
a clause to the effect "everything you do while employed by this company
is owned by this company". It varies in terms of severity and scope, but
I've seen it every time for myself.
Under such an agreement - can the employer truly disclaim ownership of
software?
In an extreme example, let us say that have access to knowledge and
resources at work which equip me to write software that would enable
terrorists to communicate with each other without being noticed by the
government. This technology is illegal for export under US export
control law. I put this software into an FSF owned project such as GCC.
Terrorists make use of this technology and destroy Washington DC. Who is
liable? Does my employer having penned a disclaimed truly remove
liability on their part? Would the US government see it this way?
There is a lot of theory when the GPL is talked about - among us non
lawyers, and from various high paid lawyers.
I don't think this subject is closed, and I don't think we're going to
close it in this thread. My intent is only to point out that it is not
closed. I can think of scenarios that I don't believe have been
successfully resolved, and if *I* can think of such scenarios - this
concerns me, because I am not a lawyer. I shouldn't be the one thinking
of these scenarios and resolving them - the lawyers should have.
Cheers,
mark
