[lmm]

> Firstly, you are wrong. The FSF does not require copyright assignment. It is up to the individual software projects to decide if they require them or not.

The FSF requires copyright assignment for many (possibly no longer all?) of their own projects, e.g. GnuTLS. Of course it's up to an individual project whether it requires it (how could the FSF possibly control what some unrelated project does?), but on those projects that the FSF themselves run (or at least many of them, and traditionally it was all of them), they require it.

> The FSF is in the unique position in that the FSF could change the GPL if they wanted to. If you use the GPL/AGPL, the FSF is inherently trustworthy;

They cannot change the GPL. They can publish new version of it, and recommend that you license your project with a term that permits it to be used under those new versions, but this is not obligatory (and notably e.g. the Linux kernel does not).

[teddyh]

> The FSF requires copyright assignment for many (possibly no longer all?) of their own projects

The FSF requires nothing of the projects; the FSF leaves the choice of copyright assignment up to the project and its maintainers. Which is what I wrote. The fact that many projects do choose to require copyright assignment does not make you be less wrong when you said that the FSF requires it.

> They cannot change the GPL.

Technically true. But the FSF can publish a new version of the GPL, which all GPL-licensed software using the “or any later version” language, which is most GPL software, will then use. Linux is an oddity here.

[lmm]

> The FSF requires nothing of the projects; the FSF leaves the choice of copyright assignment up to the project and its maintainers.

And in the case of their own projects, the projects where the FSF is the project/the maintainers, what is it they do? They require copyright assignment.

[teddyh]

What are you talking about? The FSF is not the direct maintainer for any projects, as far as I know. The project maintainers are people.

[lmm]

Many GNU projects are maintained directly by the FSF/GNU (the same entity; their own statements acknowledge that they share personnel and have no clear boundary between them). And for many more projects they hold the copyright and provide the funding/hosting/etc. and the named maintainer is either a member or affiliated with the FSF/GNU, which suggests they exercise some control over it (e.g. the published hosting requirements for Savannah say that projects they host "should" follow the GNU hosting standards, which include requiring copyright assignment to the FSF if the FSF holds the copyright).

[teddyh]

And the named maintainer has the right to not require CLA:s for their project. The FSF does not require the maintainer to require CLA:s.

[lmm]

Well, requiring copyright assignment (not just a CLA) is in their published rules for using Savannah, and something almost all major GNU/FSF projects did in the past. Even if it's now something they merely encourage rather than require (and I'd be interested to see a public confirmation of this) my point stands.