I am pleased to see a change based on my recommendation. The FSF should not refrain from accepting contributions based on modified versions of software in instances where the developer of the modified work is unable to get a copyright assignment of the code, but are legally allowed to use a compatible license without requiring copyright.
----- Christopher Dimech Society has became too quick to pass judgement and declare someone Persona Non-Grata, the most extreme form of censure a country can bestow. In a new era of destructive authoritarianism, I support Richard Stallman. Times of great crisis are also times of great opportunity. I call upon you to make this struggle yours as well ! https://stallmansupport.org/ https://www.fsf.org/ https://www.gnu.org/ > Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2021 at 2:28 AM > From: "Mark Wielaard" <m...@klomp.org> > To: "David Edelsohn" <dje....@gmail.com>, "GCC Development" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> > Subject: Re: Update to GCC copyright assignment policy > > Hi David, > > On Tue, 2021-06-01 at 10:00 -0400, David Edelsohn via Gcc wrote: > > The GCC Steering Committee has decided to relax the requirement to > > assign copyright for all changes to the Free Software Foundation. GCC > > will continue to be developed, distributed, and licensed under the GNU > > General Public License v3.0. GCC will now accept contributions with or > > without an FSF copyright assignment. This change is consistent with > > the practices of many other major Free Software projects, such as the > > Linux kernel. > > > > Contributors who have an FSF Copyright Assignment don't need to > > change anything. Contributors who wish to utilize the Developer Certificate > > of Origin[1] should add a Signed-off-by message to their commit messages. > > Developers with commit access may add their name to the DCO list in the > > MAINTAINERS file to certify the DCO for all future commits in lieu of > > individual > > Signed-off-by messages for each commit. > > This seems a pretty bad policy to be honest. > Why was there no public discussion on this? > > I certainly understand not wanting to assign copyright to the FSF > anymore given the recent board decisions. But changing GCC from having > a shared copyright pool to having lots of individual (or company?) > copyright holders seems like a regression for a strong copyleft > project. > > With individual copyright holders companies no longer have clear way to > know whether they are in compliance unless they talk to each and every > individual copyright holder (see also the linux kernel, where there are > some individuals who randomly sue companies just to get some money to > drop the lawsuit). And for users it will be harder to get compliant > sources if they can no longer simply ask the shared copyright holder, > but instead will have to get enough individual copyright holders to get > a distributor into compliance. > > If we no longer want the FSF to be the legal guardian and copyright > holder for GCC could we please find another legal entity that performs > that role and helps us as a project with copyleft compliance? > > I would be happy to setup a shared copyright pool under the Conservancy > Copyleft Compliance project for example: > https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/ > > Thanks, > > Mark >
