[blihp]

There's a world of difference between releasing contributions under the same copyright (i.e. if you're contributing to a GPL'd project, release your code under the same GPL license) and assigning copyright to the FSF. I think that's the turn-off for many. It isn't a matter of 'what would you even do with' the contribution, it's a matter of recognition and making it much harder to change the licensing terms down the road.

For those who just want to bury their head in the sand and pretend copyright doesn't exist, they will be the first to complain when the code that they wrote is taken private and commercialized (i.e. look at the licenses this has been an issue for)... making code 'public domain' allows for that.

[buzzkillington]

What happens when the woke takeover of the SFS is finally complete and emacs is re-licensed under a new social justice license where you can only use it if you don't oppress minorities?

I don't trust the FSF further than I can throw them and I don't trust them with my copyrights.

[coffeecat]

Wouldn't all previous releases be fork-able under the terms of the current GPL in that case?

[_-david-_]

Yes but it would potentially split the community.

[blihp]

Agreed... that was my point. Specifically, it doesn't matter who takes over or what the changes are, only that direction/priorities may change and be inconsistent with the intent of the original contributor.

[downerending]

The existing code cannot just be "re-licensed". It's true that they might decide to make future versions available only under some weird license, but that wouldn't cause prior contributions to become unavailable. Continuing the code line under the original license would always be possible, given effort.

[masoudd]

That's when we fork emacs with the GPL license. You can't retroactively change the license to the code you published as GPL before