On Sun, Dec 02, 2012 at 11:58:55AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > >> The FSF is bound by its bylaws. > > So are most corporations. > Depending on how much you trust US law (and depending on the state in > which the non-profit is formed), there is a fairly substantial difference. > Board members of non-profits can be held personally legally liable to the > public for running the non-profit "in the public interest," and there is > some oversight by the state attorney general that the non-profit is really > being run according to its mission and bylaws. One of the things that bothers me whenever this discussion comes up is that people seem to assume that non-profits are not only ultimately trustworthy, but also inviolable. Even if you have complete confidence in the (present and future) governance of the FSF, non-profits are not immune from lawsuits. And the FSF happens to be engaged in an activity that exposes it to certain liability: distribution of software, which may infringe any number of patents in the US. If $evilcorp decides to sue the FSF for patent infringement, and secures a judgement against the FSF that's worth more than all the FSF's assets, what prevents the bankruptcy court from assigning all copyrights to $evilcorp and thus giving them full control over future licensing of the work? The answer, as it happens, is the very terms of the FSF's copyright assignment, which ensures the work remains available under a copyleft license. *That* is the gold standard for copyright assignment, by which other copyright assignments should be measured, not by whether the counterparty is a for-profit or non-profit corporation. It's this which protects us against the threat of EvilRMSBot replacing the genuine article, or EvilCorp taking the FSF's assets and leaving the bylaws. Canonical's CLA terms are not identical to the FSF's copyright assignment, but they attempt to strike a similar balance. I think the CLA ought to be judged on that basis. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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