From: Werner Koch wk@gnupg.org
You are right that the GNU project wants an assignment for the core OS. tar(1) is one of those important parts. Well there is a very well working tar available so it does not make sense to dispense with a copyright assignment.
I aggree with you! Star is the fastest and most standard compliant tar implementation even witout haveing FSF copyright asigned to it. There is no need to hassle with copyright assignements. Many people already discovered that GNUtar has compatibility problems with many other tar impelemtations outside... better to have a good impelementation witout the blessng of FSF than a bad implementation with FSF's blessing.
I do not understand why a request for a copyright assignments reduces freedom - especially not for the assignee who is not even bound to the license and can change it as he likes.
This is funny that you don't understand...
Make a mathematical proove: If your stapement was true, then FSF would have no need to insist in the copyright assignement.
Jörg
EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin js@cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) If you don't have iso-8859-1 schilling@fokus.gmd.de (work) chars I am J"org Schilling URL: http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix