Re: Regarding copyright assignment to FSF
Hi, On Thu, Aug 12, 2021 at 12:18:20PM +1000, Damien Zammit wrote: > On 11/8/21 11:01 pm, Ludovic Courtès wrote: > > It would be interesting to consider dropping the copyright assignment > > requirement for Hurd/Mach/MiG. For what remains primarily a hobby > > project, this looks to me like a hindrance more than anything else. > > I imagine it is slightly inconvenient for new contributors, but not a > hindrance in my opinion. The fact that this process potentially or apparently took (or rather, has been taking) months for Sergey (I don't know when it was initiated), is a pretty good indicator that it is more than a nuisance. > It ensures that FSF has complete control of the licensing. I don't mind that, but I also think the Hurd is not a tactical FSF asset anymore that needs to be kept under tight control. The FSF has enough copyright in the Hurd that it can enforce it whenever it likes, even if other people's copyrighted code (as is already the case with the pfinet stack) is added. Finally, the GPLv2+ code can always be licensed to GPLv3+ once all the GPLv2only code has been removed, no copyright assignments are required there, either. So if the Hurd maintainers would like to drop the requirement (as has been done with GCC and glibc in recent months), I would support that. Michael
Re: Regarding copyright assignment to FSF
> On 2021-08-12 12:18:20 +1000, Damien Zammit wrote: > On 11/8/21 11:01 pm, Ludovic Courtès wrote: This seem somewhat off-topic for the lists, so I’m open to suggestions on what other forum to use (should anyone wish to continue this thread.) My suggestion is, as usual, to use a Usenet newsgroup, such as comp.misc, for the purpose. (See http://www.aioe.org/ for a free, no registration needed, IPv4-only newsserver; or http://www.eternal-september.org/ for free registration, IPv6 + IPv4 one.) >> It would be interesting to consider dropping the copyright assignment >> requirement for Hurd/Mach/MiG. For what remains primarily a hobby >> project, this looks to me like a hindrance more than anything else. > I imagine it is slightly inconvenient for new contributors, but not a > hindrance in my opinion. I’m going to concur; there’s some delay, sure, but not that much of actual effort on the part of the new contributor. Unless, of course, one’s employer is uncooperative, but I’m afraid that can’t be helped. > It ensures that FSF has complete control of the licensing. And enforcement. I’d argue that in a better world, no copyright assignment would be necessary (nor would be GPL, but that’s another matter), as anyone would be able to bring an infringement case to the court entirely by themselves. As it is, however, some considerations apply. As I understand it (though IANAL), there’re two parts to this story. First of all, copyright enforcement is, in general, a process that itself requires certain effort. Do you have time to spare on filing a suit? Will you have some more to see it through? Do you know a good lawyer to hire, or do you have the necessary skills to represent yourself in the court? What remedy will you seek? Moreover, /copyleft/ enforcement is tricky by itself. Copyright was devised, basically, as a legal tool for author to sue his publisher for royalties. As such, even though that does seem to slowly change, the first question of the court for your newly- brought GPL-infringement case would be: what sum, in your opinion, does the company owe you? Are you prepared to answer that? Given the above, I’m inclined to think that assigning copyright to a party legally prepared to fight for it to be a sensible choice /whether it is required or not./ And /especially/ for hobby projects; for I presume that for something you do for living, you’ll be quite in position to estimate damages arising from someone infringing your copyright. From here, we may try to rank different charities on how well they handle their enforcement cases. My guess is that FSF will come near the top. The other part concerns one’s employer, and the terms of the contract. For instance, the contract I’m currently under says that I’m entitled to copyright on any and all works I create, /unless/ I’ve been specifically directed by the employer to create any given work. From what I’ve heard, however, some contracts allow the /employer/ (variant: school) to claim copyright over any work created by the employee during the term of the contract. In this case, it’s arguably better for all parties involved to have the employer’s position clarified and known. Copyright assignment is one, though perhaps not the only, way it can be done. -- FSF associate member #7257 http://am-1.org/~ivan/
Re: Regarding copyright assignment to FSF
Michael Banck writes: > Hi, > > On Sat, Aug 14, 2021 at 02:19:12PM +0200, Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide wrote: >> Michael Banck writes: >> >> > I don't mind that, but I also think the Hurd is not a tactical FSF asset >> > anymore that needs to be kept under tight control. The FSF has enough >> > copyright in the Hurd that it can enforce it whenever it likes, even if >> > other people's copyrighted code (as is already the case with the pfinet >> >> I wouldn’t be so sure about that. >> >> 1. Without copyright assignment of all code involved, enforcement >>becomes much harder. > > I don't think "much harder" can be quantified in a meaningful way, > seeing how parts of the Hurd aren't under the FSF copyright at this > point, anyway. A real life example is GNU Guix. There are (probably) more than hundred copyright holders (ain't I right, Ludo?). Is it possible enforce the copyright of that package? All copyright holders must cooperate to enforce GPL, which is probably impossible. >> 2. The Hurt still provides capabilities other OS’es don’t — while >>maintaining POSIX compatibility. We’ve seen audacity basically >>being taken over by a company in the past months, so the danger of >>losing Hurd to proprietarization rather got bigger than smaller. > > Nobody proposes that the FSF relicenses the Hurd to a non-copyleft > license before relinquishing the copyright assignment mandate, so I > don't see how the Hurd continueing to be under a GPLv2+ license will > ever be able to be taken proprietary. When copyright is not enforced, there is no difference between a GPL licensed and a public domain software. When a company sees that the copyright isn't enforced of a GPLed, it can take the program and make it proprietary. > I'm not going to respond further on this thread, this is starting to get > off-topic really quick and if there are further things to be discussed, > gnu-system-discuss or whatever other mailing list is likely the better > place. > > > Michael NOTE: I am not a lawyer. -- Akib Azmain Turja This message is signed by me with my GnuPG key. It's fingerprint is: 7001 8CE5 819F 17A3 BBA6 66AF E74F 0EFA 922A E7F5 Get it with: gpg --recv-keys 70018CE5819F17A3BBA666AFE74F0EFA922AE7F5 See https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/ to learn more and protect your emails and yourself from surveillance. Please send me encrypted messages whenever possible. Never send me Microsoft Office attachments, they use secret proprietary format so I'll fail to read and trash them; send them in plain text if possible or in formats like ODF and PDF if your document contains images or videos. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html to learn more. Please don't send HTML emails, use plain text. HTML emails are usually vulnerable, about thousand times larger than plain text and look ugly to me. They contain trackers, so whenever someone opens a messsage he is tracked by third-party. See http://www.asciiribbon.org to learn more. () ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail /\ www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary attachments signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Regarding copyright assignment to FSF
Hi, On Sat, Aug 14, 2021 at 02:19:12PM +0200, Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide wrote: > Michael Banck writes: > > > I don't mind that, but I also think the Hurd is not a tactical FSF asset > > anymore that needs to be kept under tight control. The FSF has enough > > copyright in the Hurd that it can enforce it whenever it likes, even if > > other people's copyrighted code (as is already the case with the pfinet > > I wouldn’t be so sure about that. > > 1. Without copyright assignment of all code involved, enforcement >becomes much harder. I don't think "much harder" can be quantified in a meaningful way, seeing how parts of the Hurd aren't under the FSF copyright at this point, anyway. > 2. The Hurt still provides capabilities other OS’es don’t — while >maintaining POSIX compatibility. We’ve seen audacity basically >being taken over by a company in the past months, so the danger of >losing Hurd to proprietarization rather got bigger than smaller. Nobody proposes that the FSF relicenses the Hurd to a non-copyleft license before relinquishing the copyright assignment mandate, so I don't see how the Hurd continueing to be under a GPLv2+ license will ever be able to be taken proprietary. I'm not going to respond further on this thread, this is starting to get off-topic really quick and if there are further things to be discussed, gnu-system-discuss or whatever other mailing list is likely the better place. Michael
Re: Regarding copyright assignment to FSF
On Sat, Aug 14, 2021 at 8:43 AM Michael Banck wrote: > The fact that this process potentially or apparently took (or rather, > has been taking) months for Sergey (I don't know when it was initiated), > is a pretty good indicator that it is more than a nuisance. Well, this is partly my own fault: I've been postponing trying to scan the signed papers (I can hack on kernel internals alright, but ask me to deal with a scanner and I'm lost). But that being said, the FSF has also been consistently slow to respond, so it would take months even if I had done everything promptly. Sergey
Re: Regarding copyright assignment to FSF
Svante Signell, le sam. 14 août 2021 23:26:55 +0200, a ecrit: > On Fri, 2021-08-13 at 18:23 +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote: > > > The GPLv2-only code is essentially the pfinet stack from Linux, for > > which we don't have any assignment anyway. But again, this is getting > > replaced by lwip. > > How to make lwip by default enabled instead of pfinet? There seems to be a wiki page about it. Samuel
Re: Regarding copyright assignment to FSF
On Fri, 2021-08-13 at 18:23 +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote: > The GPLv2-only code is essentially the pfinet stack from Linux, for > which we don't have any assignment anyway. But again, this is getting > replaced by lwip. Hello. How to make lwip by default enabled instead of pfinet? Thanks :)
Re: Regarding copyright assignment to FSF
Michael Banck writes: > I don't mind that, but I also think the Hurd is not a tactical FSF asset > anymore that needs to be kept under tight control. The FSF has enough > copyright in the Hurd that it can enforce it whenever it likes, even if > other people's copyrighted code (as is already the case with the pfinet I wouldn’t be so sure about that. 1. Without copyright assignment of all code involved, enforcement becomes much harder. 2. The Hurt still provides capabilities other OS’es don’t — while maintaining POSIX compatibility. We’ve seen audacity basically being taken over by a company in the past months, so the danger of losing Hurd to proprietarization rather got bigger than smaller. Best wishes, Arne -- Unpolitisch sein heißt politisch sein ohne es zu merken signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Regarding copyright assignment to FSF
Maxime Devos writes: > Upgrading the GPLv2-only code might be dificult if multiple people hold > the copyright, so for the GPLv2-only code, it might be a good idea to still > require copyright assignment. When we did it for Mercurial, going from GPLv2 only to or later took years and a *lot* of work. That’s why I consider copyright assignment to the FSF as a good idea. They still get restricted to only use that to further Free Software (if they violate that, the assignment loses the reliablility that they need). >> Even if you do keep it yourself, it makes it more difficult for anyone to >> enforce >> the GPL for that project. > > A fair point, though I don't know how accurate that is. From what I read, it’s the most important point, because the first answer the other sides lawyers always give is „you’re not authorized by *all* authors to enforce the GPL, so you lose.“ Best wishes, Arne -- Unpolitisch sein heißt politisch sein ohne es zu merken signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Regarding copyright assignment to FSF
Maxime Devos, le ven. 13 août 2021 15:42:37 +0200, a ecrit: > so for the GPLv2-only code, it might be a good idea to still > require copyright assignment. The GPLv2-only code is essentially the pfinet stack from Linux, for which we don't have any assignment anyway. But again, this is getting replaced by lwip. Samuel
Re: Regarding copyright assignment to FSF
Damien Zammit schreef op do 12-08-2021 om 12:18 [+1000]: > Hi Ludo, I'm not Ludo, but here's my response anyway. (I'm interested in doing some small and larger things with the Hurd, but I keep being occupied by other things and I'm having a hard time understanding the inner workings ...) > On 11/8/21 11:01 pm, Ludovic Courtès wrote: > > It would be interesting to consider dropping the copyright assignment > > requirement for Hurd/Mach/MiG. For what remains primarily a hobby > > project, this looks to me like a hindrance more than anything else. > > I imagine it is slightly inconvenient for new contributors, but not a > hindrance in my opinion. > It ensures that FSF has complete control of the licensing. > For example, how will FSF upgrade the project to GPLv3 if multiple people > hold the copyright? > (There are plans to remove the GPLv2-only code btw, as Samuel said). When the code is GPLv2-or-later, replace v2 with v3 in the license notices. If the code uses GPLv2-only code, first upgrade the GPLv2-only code to GPLv3-or-later. Upgrading the GPLv2-only code might be dificult if multiple people hold the copyright, so for the GPLv2-only code, it might be a good idea to still require copyright assignment. > PS: Why are you promoting a widespread drop of FSF copyright assignment > anyway? > In my opinion, FSF is a better steward for copyright authorship than any > company > would be assuming you are working on free software on an employer's time and > don't > mutually agree with your employer to keep your own authorship. FWIW, Ludovic does not seem to be promoting assigning copyright to employers. > Even if you do keep it yourself, it makes it more difficult for anyone to > enforce > the GPL for that project. A fair point, though I don't know how accurate that is. Greetings, Maxime. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
