[infodroid]

I reviewed the discussion but I still can't understand what the controversy is about. According to the following explanatory note from the GNU project, developers don't have to assign copyright to the FSF for it to be an official GNU project:

When the developers of a program make it a GNU package, they can decide either to give the copyright to the FSF so it can enforce the GPL for the package, or else to keep the copyright as well as the responsibility for enforcing the GPL.

Source: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html

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FYI this is the start of the discussion thread:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/nano-devel/2016-05/msg000...

[davexunit]

>developers don't have to assign copyright to the FSF for it to be an official GNU project

This is correct, but it's up to the maintainer to decide if their project will require copyright assignment from all contributors or not. I send patches to a couple of GNU projects, Guile and Guix. Guile requires copyright assignment, Guix does not.

Assigning copyright to the FSF is very much unlike assigning copyright to a for-profit company. The terms that you sign and agree to with the FSF are very reasonable and they protect the developer from having the license changed should the FSF be taken over by people that would want to abuse your contributions.

[snowwrestler]

> Assigning copyright to the FSF is very much unlike assigning copyright to a for-profit company. The terms that you sign and agree to with the FSF are very reasonable and they protect the developer from having the license changed should the FSF be taken over by people that would want to abuse your contributions.

This does not comport with my understanding of how copyright works. Once you transfer your copyright to someone, the creative work is entirely theirs. So what standing would you have to object to what they do with it? It belongs to them now, not you.

It doesn't matter what an agreement says if you don't have standing in court to enforce it.

[davexunit]

It belongs to them now, but under the conditions that I agreed to. So, they have to keep the source free or they will have violated a legally binding agreement with me.

[snowwrestler]

What is the penalty for that violation?

[cyphar]

The same penalty as with violation of any other type of contract. They would also lose any rights under that contract because they violated their side of the deal.

[cygx]

Once you transfer your copyright to someone, the creative work is entirely theirs.

Note that in jurisdictions like Germany, it's impossible to sign away our version of copyright ('Urheberrecht', creator's rights): At most, you can grant exclusive usage rights.

[ArneBab]

They set conditions (we will keep it free) just like any software contract where you only get the software if you promise to adhere to some rules.

I don’t think the FSF ever violated the condition, so there’s nothing you can do to test whether a court would follow that interpretation.

[snowwrestler]

Software contracts with conditions are license agreements. You get to use Windows, Ubuntu Linux, Photoshop, Facebook, etc. as long as you adhere to the terms of the license.

You don't get the copyright. That's still held by the software company. That's how they can force you to adhere to their conditions--they own the software and they can take away your license.

But if they gave you the copyright, they couldn't take it away anymore, so you would have no reason to follow their conditions any more.

[cyphar]

Contracts and copyright law are wildly different things. It's misleading and incorrect to conflate the two together.

[snowwrestler]

Yes, that's my point--the person I replied to was confusing copyright assignment with buying software, and I am explaining how they are different.

[avar]

As I recall the terms include some phrase like "we might change the license to be similar in spirit to the existing one" which gives FSF and anyone who controls it in the future a lot of wiggle room.

E.g. the GPL v2 to v3 transition was enabled by that, with the introduction of patent/"TiVo" clauses. No reason they couldn't make more drastic changes in the future.

[davexunit]

That means that the contributors agreed to license the code as "GPL version 2, or at your option any later version", which means that they are amenable to changes to the GPL. The FSF could not, however, make a GPLv4 that was a proprietary software license or something. I wouldn't have signed copyright assignment forms if that was a possibility.

Really, FSF copyright is a very good thing, and you can even do it completely digitally in the US and Germany (used to be that you had to use snail mail to receive forms and send them back). People shouldn't get scared away from contributing to GNU projects that choose copyright assignment. There's no better place to protect the GPL than at the FSF.

[Addile]

And that's where I don't fully agree. There are many projects licenced under "GPL v2 or later" and they don't need copyright assignment. Copyright assignment is huge and opens the door for way too many legal stuff.

Also Copyright is a pretty US thing. Law differs and many Countries don't actually allow it. Also since you brought up Getmany already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_Germany#Trans... Germany is such a country and even if you were to assign copyright to them it would be legally void to the best of my knowledge. And also other countries that base it on moral rights.

Copyright law is very different between countries and way too strong to just transfer for such a use. If they really wanted to, they should have made a license to handle it exactly the way they wanted.

[cyphar]

The problem is that in order to have the ability to register their copyright and do meaningful enforcement actions in the US, they need copyright assignment. Copyright cares about authorship, so if they don't have "authorship" (read: own the copyright) then they have very little power to enforce the GPL.

Some other people argue it's not necessary, and while that might be true, it's better to be safe than sorry. Not to mention that all GNU projects are GPLv3-or-later anyway (so any contribution would be able to be upgraded anyway since it's licensed in such a way that you can use it under GPLv4). If you refuse and license your change under GPLv3, it won't get merged.

[bonzini]

It says:

5. FSF agrees that any program "based on the Works" offered to the public by FSF or its agents or assignees shall be offered in the form of machine-readable source code, in addition to any other forms of FSF's choosing. However, FSF is free to choose at its convenience the media of distribution for machine-readable source code and may charge a fee of its choosing for copies.

[ArneBab]

“similar in spirit” is a pretty strong condition, since there are lots of philosophy texts on the GNU pages which make it clear what “similar in spirit” means. A court would likely rely on these to decide a case.

[supercheetah]

Interesting. It looks like the Nano devs have misunderstood what can be called a GNU package. If they don't assign copyright to the FSF, but want it to still be a GNU package, they just have to declare that they're taking responsibility for licensing enforcement.