Re: Debian and copyrights

[Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS <edmundo@rano.org>]

Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>:

>  2. You're the author and want to prevent *yourself* from switching to
>     a non-free license in the future. Hmm? The best way would be to
>     decide not to do it, and then have the strength of character to
>     stick to your decision.

However, you might be forced by a court to assign the copyright to
someone else, or you might die and not trust your heirs, and there's
always the worry that you might be struck down by insanity ...

Solutions might be to assign the copyright to the FSF or set up a new
trust of your own to which you can assign the copyright, but I think I
prefer the solution where you have lots of contributors and you share
the copyright with those numerous other people. No offence to RMS, but
the chances of all the copyright holders in the Linux kernel agreeing
to a non-free release of Linux are probably lower than the chances of
the FSF agreeing to a non-free release of the GNU tools.

Edmund