Contributor agreements and copyright assignment (was Re: Really, about udev, not init sytsems)

[Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen@err.no>]

]] Barry Warsaw 

> On Nov 29, 2012, at 03:40 PM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> 
> >Plus, you have to sign a contributor's agreement with Canonical which leaves
> >a bad taste in my mouth. That shouldn't be the case with true free software,
> >should it?
> 
> In an ideal world maybe it shouldn't, but in truth it is for both open source
> and free software.  As project leader of a GNU project, with copyrights owned
> by the FSF, I am required to obtain copyright assignments from contributors,
> which some folks feel are more onerous than contributor agreements.  Open
> source projects like Python require contributor agreements for core
> developers, and this is not an uncommon requirement.

Are you equating the FSF and the PSF with a private, for-profit company
here?  That seems to be stretching it a bit.

> We can argue about specific contribution legal documents and policies
> (although hopefully, not here ;) but not about whether they are a reality in
> today's FLOSS world.

There's a significant difference whether your contractual counterpart is
somebody who has the public good or profits in the pockets of its owners
in mind.

-- 
Tollef Fog Heen
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are