Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 22:46:07 -0500 (EST) From: Alfred Perlstein <bright@rush.net> To: cjclark@home.com Cc: "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net>, kuehl@lgk.de, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: FSF code & ownership Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.990512223823.26546Q-100000@cygnus.rush.net> In-Reply-To: <199905130247.WAA11499@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
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On Wed, 12 May 1999, Crist J. Clark wrote: > G. Adam Stanislav wrote, > [snip] > > He, too, got away with copyright, replacing it with copyleft: Anything a > > programmer writes does not belong to its creator but to society at large. > > Once a programmer releases code under GPL, he gives away all rights to it > > for the ephemeric benefit of all. Even the original author is not permitted > > to reuse his own code, except under GPL forever. > > Hmmm... I do not see how that can be true. The _original_ programmer, > the orginial copyright holder, cannot use his own code anyway he would > like? Sure, the copies of the code that are already out there are > really 'out there' and cannot be retroactively un-GNUed, but I don't > see how the original author is prevented from licensing a derivative > work, or even an unmodified version, anyway he sees fit. I think that for code to be accepted as "official FSF code" the right of it must be signed over to the FSF. Simply, you loose ownership of the code. I think if you look at some of the entries in various GNU code contribution FAQs it will explain this. http://www.fsf.org/prep/standards_4.html --- Accepting Contributions If the program you are working on is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, then when someone else sends you a piece of code to add to the program, we need legal papers to use it--just as we asked you to sign papers initially. Each person who makes a nontrivial contribution to a program must sign some sort of legal papers in order for us to have clear title to the program; the main author alone is not enough. ... --- Or am I mistaken? This is also why it's such a pain to contribute to FSF code, there's a lot of paper work that must be completed for even small patches. -Alfred To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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