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At least originally, the reason for assigning copyright (and signing a waiver) was because there were some high profile cases of employers claiming that some co
by mikekchar 7y ago
At least originally, the reason for assigning copyright (and signing a waiver) was because there were some high profile cases of employers claiming that some contributions were owned by them when employees did work in their spare time. I believe it was RMS who decided that legally it was just safer to ask for copyright assignment. I believe that he later relaxed significantly on the position, but I think it's still common practice on GNU projects.
- em-bee 7y agoit was my understanding that the reason for copyright assignment was that the FSF believed it would be difficult to defend the copyright of a project if it was owned by multiple people. with several high profile cases in the linux kernel i think this belief has been shown to be overcautious and maybe this has led to a relaxation of the position.