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As I understand it, it's not lack of trust, but rather that if a legal dispute occurs, it's easier if only one party is the copyright holder rather than having
by gnuvince 9y ago
As I understand it, it's not lack of trust, but rather that if a legal dispute occurs, it's easier if only one party is the copyright holder rather than having to find hundreds of developers scattered around the world.
- josteink 9y agoLet's say that argument is fair enough, at least in theory. How many legal disputes have the FSF had recently, in practice, where this turned out crucial? More specifically: how much have they gained by this vs how many contributions have they lost? Until proven otherwise, I'd expect them to clearly be in the negative here.
- torrent-of-ions 9y agoSo you'll wait until the FSF finds it cannot defend the GPL in court and then try to get copyright assignments from thousands of programmers? That's downright stupid. If there was evidence that some third party could enforce GPL compliance on behalf of the copyright holder(s) then maybe the FSF should consider relaxing the requirements. Do you recall that Sony failed to comply with the GPL when they used LAME? The LAME community wasn't prepared to actually do anything about it. That's the kind of shit that would happen, especially to smaller projects. There are big companies out there that want to use your hard work without compensation and shit all over the GPL. Never forget that.
- josteink 9y ago> So you'll wait until the FSF finds it cannot defend the GPL in court and then try to get copyright assignments from thousands of programmers? I'll rather have code which is harder to defend than defense for code I never got.