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See also the announcement by the Cygwin maintainer, Corinna Vinschen: https://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2016-06/msg00326.html https://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2016-06/ms

See also the announcement by the Cygwin maintainer, Corinna Vinschen: https://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2016-06/msg00326.html https://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2016-06/msg00326.html

JoshTriplett 10y ago
> it also allows us to drop the requirement for contributor's to sign a copyright assignment. Excellent; always nice to see fewer copyright assignments and CLAs in the world.
- richardfontana 10y ago
  Agreed. Cygwin was the only surviving project arising out of Red Hat to use copyright assignment, Red Hat having maintained Cygnus's late-1990s-vintage copyright assignment policy without substantive change until now. (The text of the Cygwin copyright assignment is actually adapted from the form used by the FSF in the 1990s.) However the project will not be adopting an "inbound=outbound" or DCO contribution policy until 2020. This is because Red Has some continuing license-related obligations to existing "buyout license" customers that the mere license change to LGPL does not address. In 2020 the last of those obligations will have ended. What the project will be doing going forward, until 2020, is requiring contributions to be made under the 2-clause BSD license. It's a sort of symbolic change during that interim period, although the end of the red tape around contributing to Cygwin will be generally appreciated.
- gumby 10y ago
  > Excellent; always nice to see fewer copyright assignments and CLAs in the world. I am the origin of the blanket assignments (among other things -- Cygnus founder). The purpose of the blanket assignment was to ensure that the FSF would have standing to sue in the case of a GPL violation. If you only contribute a small amount it might not matter (because any material violation probably would include other, covered code) but if you end up contributing a somewhat self-contained module or function it does. Now, more than 25 years later, it's less of a problem, and something somewhat unitary like the Linux kernel survives with many many copyright holders, but for something smaller like Cygwin it makes more sense. I guess rhat figured it wouldn't matter any more -- hope they're right!
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    "If you only contribute a small amount it might not matter" I wouldn't be so sure. FWIW, Victoria Hall, who litigated the first GPL case with a real decision in the US (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobsen_v._Katzer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobsen_v._Katzer) , told me she had to run around and get some ridiculous number of assignments (I want to say 200 but i could be misremembering), even for folks who contributed very small amounts of code. "Now, more than 25 years later, it's less of a problem" It depends. GPL enforcement folks will tell you it's an even larger problem now than it was before, but in the end, i don't think it's the assignment parts that cause the most pressing issues. Outside of copyright the bigger problem for larger projects is maintaining patent peace among larger participants particularly when they compete outside of the open source project, and CLA's solve this problem (and if you do it right, make it clear to all participants they contribute on the same terms, nobody is special)
    - gumby 10y ago
      > "Now, more than 25 years later, it's less of a problem" > It depends. GPL enforcement folks will tell you it's an even larger problem now than it was before, but in the end, i don't think it's the assignment parts that cause the most pressing issues. Well, I would have said (well, in fact I did say) that the Linux kernel's lack of assignments would cause problems but in practice it hasn't. The point of the blanket assignments was to avoid running around to get the scraps, as I mentioned, but again in practice if code includes chunks from Alice and Bob plus a few scraps from Carol and David, Alice and Bob can have standing to sue even if the ownership of Carol and David's one-liners is unclear in the eyes of the court. BUT if ownership is clear and it's all Fred's (i.e. FSF's! :-) then it removes a possibly expensive diversion as the infringer tries to attack standing.
      - atgreen 10y ago
        > Well, I would have said (well, in fact I did say) that the Linux kernel's lack of assignments would cause problems but in practice it hasn't. Is this why Cygnus didn't buy Red Hat? :)

See also the announcement by the Cygwin maintainer, Corinna Vinschen: https://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2016-06/msg00326.html https://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2016-06/msg00326.html

JoshTriplett 10y ago

> it also allows us to drop the requirement for contributor's to sign a copyright assignment. Excellent; always nice to see fewer copyright assignments and CLAs in the world.

richardfontana 10y ago
Agreed. Cygwin was the only surviving project arising out of Red Hat to use copyright assignment, Red Hat having maintained Cygnus's late-1990s-vintage copyright assignment policy without substantive change until now. (The text of the Cygwin copyright assignment is actually adapted from the form used by the FSF in the 1990s.) However the project will not be adopting an "inbound=outbound" or DCO contribution policy until 2020. This is because Red Has some continuing license-related obligations to existing "buyout license" customers that the mere license change to LGPL does not address. In 2020 the last of those obligations will have ended. What the project will be doing going forward, until 2020, is requiring contributions to be made under the 2-clause BSD license. It's a sort of symbolic change during that interim period, although the end of the red tape around contributing to Cygwin will be generally appreciated.
gumby 10y ago
> Excellent; always nice to see fewer copyright assignments and CLAs in the world. I am the origin of the blanket assignments (among other things -- Cygnus founder). The purpose of the blanket assignment was to ensure that the FSF would have standing to sue in the case of a GPL violation. If you only contribute a small amount it might not matter (because any material violation probably would include other, covered code) but if you end up contributing a somewhat self-contained module or function it does. Now, more than 25 years later, it's less of a problem, and something somewhat unitary like the Linux kernel survives with many many copyright holders, but for something smaller like Cygwin it makes more sense. I guess rhat figured it wouldn't matter any more -- hope they're right!
- DannyBee 10y ago
  "If you only contribute a small amount it might not matter" I wouldn't be so sure. FWIW, Victoria Hall, who litigated the first GPL case with a real decision in the US (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobsen_v._Katzer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobsen_v._Katzer) , told me she had to run around and get some ridiculous number of assignments (I want to say 200 but i could be misremembering), even for folks who contributed very small amounts of code. "Now, more than 25 years later, it's less of a problem" It depends. GPL enforcement folks will tell you it's an even larger problem now than it was before, but in the end, i don't think it's the assignment parts that cause the most pressing issues. Outside of copyright the bigger problem for larger projects is maintaining patent peace among larger participants particularly when they compete outside of the open source project, and CLA's solve this problem (and if you do it right, make it clear to all participants they contribute on the same terms, nobody is special)
  - gumby 10y ago
    > "Now, more than 25 years later, it's less of a problem" > It depends. GPL enforcement folks will tell you it's an even larger problem now than it was before, but in the end, i don't think it's the assignment parts that cause the most pressing issues. Well, I would have said (well, in fact I did say) that the Linux kernel's lack of assignments would cause problems but in practice it hasn't. The point of the blanket assignments was to avoid running around to get the scraps, as I mentioned, but again in practice if code includes chunks from Alice and Bob plus a few scraps from Carol and David, Alice and Bob can have standing to sue even if the ownership of Carol and David's one-liners is unclear in the eyes of the court. BUT if ownership is clear and it's all Fred's (i.e. FSF's! :-) then it removes a possibly expensive diversion as the infringer tries to attack standing.
    - atgreen 10y ago
      > Well, I would have said (well, in fact I did say) that the Linux kernel's lack of assignments would cause problems but in practice it hasn't. Is this why Cygnus didn't buy Red Hat? :)