Re: upstart: please update to latest upstream version
Matt Zagrabelny <mzagrabe@d.umn.edu> writes:
> On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 12:22 PM, Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> wrote:
>> I, for one, have even more of a problem contributing to FSF projects
>> that require copyright assignment than I would contributing to upstart.
> Would you comment on why you have issues with the FSF contributor
> agreement?
I do most of my free software development as part of my job, and my
employer is not going to sign this stuff. I tried before with the FSF
copyright assignment and got nowhere.
Actually, now that I think about it, the FSF copyright assignment may be
easier if it still doesn't say anything about patents, since patents are a
separate red flag. But in any event, neither of them are going to happen.
Remember, it's not the job of an employer's lawyers to make it easy for me
to contribute to random projects that are only ancillarily related to my
job or are just things I fixed out of convenience while working on other
stuff. It's the job of lawyers to protect the institution, and not
signing anything that isn't necessary is an obvious and reasonable first
cut at doing so. Why spend the expensive legal resources on analyzing an
agreement that isn't providing much benefit?
As you might be able to tell, I actually support that legal position. If
my employer wanted to make substantial contributions that would really
help both parties, something could probably be negotiated, but when we're
just talking about random bug fixes, the risk isn't worth it.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Reply to: