Copyright assignment (was: trademark infringement FreeFOAM)

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> writes:

> Gerber van der Graaf <gerber.vdgraaf@gmail.com> writes:
> >> I think that accepting contributions only when the contributor
> >> transfers his/her copyright is indeed allowed for GPL software:
> >> actually it's what the FSF does... :-(
[…]

> p.s. I think the FSF in general plays it quite fair; I'd treat a
> for-profit company with a lot more skepticism.

Bradley Kuhn contrasts the two in a recent weblog entry
<URL:http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/02/01/copyright-not-all-equal.html>;
he argues that the FSF's approach is good.

Michael Meeks gave an interesting presentation on the effects of
copyright assignment, using examples of OpenOffice vs LibreOffice and
other cases <URL:http://lwn.net/Articles/414051/>; he argues that even
the FSF's copyright assignment requirement is harmful without any
benefit to free software.

-- 
 \        “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though |
  `\          nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is.” |
_o__)                                                 —Albert Einstein |
Ben Finney