> Everyone, > > Craig Andrews just assigned his copyright for his StatusNet > contributions to the FSF: > > http://identi.ca/notice/33822296 > Assigned my copyrights on !StatusNet to the !FSF which can now defend > them and itself develop StatusNet http://ur1.ca/03x69 > > I'm extremely concerned about that last part. If StatusNet is going to > become an FSF project, I believe other contributors to the codebase > deserve some say or at least some warning. > > Craig, I'd really appreciate a longer explanation about what's going on. > Until you've made your intentions clear, I've removed your checkin > privileges for StatusNet. > > -Evan
I think making a project a GNU project requires permission from the project - and that's not provided, nor what I personally desire. All I did was assign copyright that used to be mine to the FSF. This doesn't give FSF any say, as FSF is restricted by the same AGPL license as everyone else, and since there are many copyright holders, FSF couldn't change the license to be anything else. No fork is introduced or proposed or ever desired, no governance change is involved - it's just a copyright assignment. The reason I assigned my copyright to FSF is as follows: 1) Someday, I'm going to stop contributing, maybe because I'll get sick of people and move to the middle of nowhere (or maybe because I'll be forced to stop contributing :-P). Who knows. In any case, I'd like my AGPL license intentions to be enforced and respected - and FSF will do that even in my absence. Note that I'm not saying that StatusNet won't enforce the license - I am saying it's nice to have multiple parties who would do so. 2) FSF is picky about projects that it will devote its own resources to (such as developers, donations, advertising, etc). If they have copyright on a project, they do more for it. I believe that there is no downside to assigning my copyright (which does not represent all StatusNet code, nor even a majority), and if the upside is more press, more developers, and more users... then it's a really good thing to do. 3) If the AGPL license is violated, I don't have the resources (legal or press) to defend my rights. FSF has those resources. This means potential violators will (hopefully) think twice about violating, and violators that have already committed the act will have more organizations that can work together to go after them (StatusNet Inc can work with FSF to bring down violators, which is a cost-saving and time-saving possibility). In the end, I think the assignment potentially enlarges the community, increases license protection, and potentially further discourages license violations. I don't think there is any downside (except, personally, I lose copyright... which somewhat bothers me, but I'll get over it). Thanks, ~Craig _______________________________________________ StatusNet-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.status.net/mailman/listinfo/statusnet-dev
