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by teddyh 675 days ago
> 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.
1 comments
lmm 675 days ago
> 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.

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teddyh 674 days ago
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.
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lmm 674 days ago
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).
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teddyh 671 days ago
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.
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lmm 667 days ago
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.
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