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
|| On Wed, 22 Aug 2001 13:28:16 +0200 (MET DST) || Joerg Schilling schilling@fokus.gmd.de wrote:
js> If your stapement was true, then FSF would have no need to insist js> in the copyright assignement.
The FSF does not insist on the copyright assignment (several GNU Projects do not have their copyright assigned to the FSF), although it is strongly recommended for two major reasons:
1. Only if the FSF has the copyright assigned it can go and defend GNU software in court for you: only the copyright-holder can go to court.
2. The "or any later version" clause is not possible in many countries (including most European ones). Therefore only the copyright holder can release software under an updated (L)GPL.
Otherwise software might simply lose its legal protection without the FSF being able to restore it when a license problem arises.
A copyright assignment to the FSF increases the security of Free Software for everyone. It isn't required but strongly recommended.
Regards, Georg
On Wed, 22 Aug 2001 13:28:16 +0200 (MET DST), Joerg Schilling said:
Make a mathematical proove: If your stapement was true, then FSF would have no need to insist in the copyright assignement.
Typo, sorry. Of course I meant assigner (well not an english word) and not assignee. See 1(d) of the currently used assignment contract.
Ciao,
Werner
ps. Can you please add References header so that follow up mail can be sorted to the correct folder.