7 ms·

Can someone please tl;dr why this was a requirement in the first place? I trust the FSF and it seems like a good idea, but I'm not sure why.

sigjuice 5y ago
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html
- jhonsrid 5y ago
  This seems to imply copyright assignment to the FSF is _required_ for GNU projects? I wonder what RMS's take is on a unilateral change like this in one of the highest profile GNU projects?
dec0dedab0de 5y ago
This may not be the FSF stance, but I can think of 3 reasons. The main one is it is easier to change the license if you want to. IANAL so I'll probably mess up these next two, which I believe are more theoretical than anything in regard to software. At least in the US. It is possible for a copyright holder to revoke a license. so there could be an important contribution living in the code base and then one day the author could revoke the license and they would have to remove the code, and somehow prove their replacement was not infringing. There is a concept of Joint Authorship. Where it could be possible for a contributor to claim joint copyright over the entire project, and then release it on their own under any license they want. I could be wrong, but I believe it has happened where book editors that didn't have an air tight contract, were able to claim joint copyright over a book they edited, and release their own versions with a different publisher.
- mcguire 5y ago
  "It is possible for a copyright holder to revoke a license. so there could be an important contribution living in the code base and then one day the author could revoke the license and they would have to remove the code, and somehow prove their replacement was not infringing." I don't believe that is true. A license is a contract; there are only two ways to revoke a contract: if the contract is illegal or if the contract provides terms to let you revoke it. If you publish software under the GPL, there is no way to revoke the license. You could stop supporting the contribution in the code base and release alternate versions under different licenses, but the versions in the code base under the GPL remain available under the original terms.
  - Macha 5y ago
    The third is specific laws having specific terms that supercede the contract, e.g. discharging contractually obligated repayments in personal bankruptcy
  - tzs 5y ago
    Nonexclusive licenses granted without consideration are by default revocable. Fortunately, GPLv3 section 2 explicitly states that it is irrevocable. GPLv2 omits such language, so to make it irrevocable you are going to want to find consideration. You can probably whack it a few times with your promissory estoppel stick hard enough to get some consideration to bleed out of it. That's probably good enough to get irrevocability.
ajross 5y ago
The copyright assignment policy dates from very early in GPL history, when it was broadly thought that in order to make copyleft work the FSF was going to have to sue entities that had misappropriated GPL software. Doing that is harder when you start from a position of having to prove that you even own the relevant copyright in the first place. It turns out this didn't happen. People who want to use free software and to stay legal just... honored the license. People who didn't want to do so used other software. And the only people who actually were breaking the license turned out to be tiny fly-by-night operations in parts of the world where copyright litigation wasn't a very useful tool anyway.
- nullc 5y ago
  The GPL has been regularly violated by huge multi-billion dollar corporations. But the FSF has had a policy of favoring compliance and forgiveness over punishment, and they've aggressively avoided litigation-- instead preferring to negotiate for compliance with goodwill loss as the threat-- to the point of contributing to some splits in free software. E.g. this is a point of disagreement between SFC and FSF.
  - warp 5y ago
    There doesn't seem to be any disagreement on GPL enforcement between SFC and FSF: - https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.htm... - https://www.fsf.org/licensing/enforcement-principles https://www.fsf.org/licensing/enforcement-principles
    - nullc 5y ago
      They don't disagree on the general ideology, at least on paper, but when it comes to enforcement actions SFC is much more prone to litigate than the FSF. IIRC FSF has only sued once, conservancy has like 100x the rate of lawsuits per years-existed. :P
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Haven't a significant number of the multi-billion dollar violations turned out to be rather "oh we didn't know" as opposed to intentional malice?
gumby 5y ago
The concern is that in a legal dispute, the FSF might not have legal standing (I.e. in a lawsuit) if the code had been contributed by and remained the property of someone else. And what if that person could not be found. I wrote the blanket assignment back in 1989 or 1990. I still consider this a legitimate risk.
- tobias3 5y ago
  One could see this in action in the Hellwig vs VMWare court case (one of the few GPL court cases). As a first step they had to show that Hellwig had made changes to code that VMWare uses that can be copyrighted. Especially difficult since every line in Linux is modified by a few different people. They failed at that and that ended the lawsuit if I remember correctly.

sigjuice 5y ago

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html

jhonsrid 5y ago
This seems to imply copyright assignment to the FSF is _required_ for GNU projects? I wonder what RMS's take is on a unilateral change like this in one of the highest profile GNU projects?

dec0dedab0de 5y ago

This may not be the FSF stance, but I can think of 3 reasons. The main one is it is easier to change the license if you want to. IANAL so I'll probably mess up these next two, which I believe are more theoretical than anything in regard to software. At least in the US. It is possible for a copyright holder to revoke a license. so there could be an important contribution living in the code base and then one day the author could revoke the license and they would have to remove the code, and somehow prove their replacement was not infringing. There is a concept of Joint Authorship. Where it could be possible for a contributor to claim joint copyright over the entire project, and then release it on their own under any license they want. I could be wrong, but I believe it has happened where book editors that didn't have an air tight contract, were able to claim joint copyright over a book they edited, and release their own versions with a different publisher.

mcguire 5y ago
"It is possible for a copyright holder to revoke a license. so there could be an important contribution living in the code base and then one day the author could revoke the license and they would have to remove the code, and somehow prove their replacement was not infringing." I don't believe that is true. A license is a contract; there are only two ways to revoke a contract: if the contract is illegal or if the contract provides terms to let you revoke it. If you publish software under the GPL, there is no way to revoke the license. You could stop supporting the contribution in the code base and release alternate versions under different licenses, but the versions in the code base under the GPL remain available under the original terms.
- Macha 5y ago
  The third is specific laws having specific terms that supercede the contract, e.g. discharging contractually obligated repayments in personal bankruptcy
- tzs 5y ago
  Nonexclusive licenses granted without consideration are by default revocable. Fortunately, GPLv3 section 2 explicitly states that it is irrevocable. GPLv2 omits such language, so to make it irrevocable you are going to want to find consideration. You can probably whack it a few times with your promissory estoppel stick hard enough to get some consideration to bleed out of it. That's probably good enough to get irrevocability.

ajross 5y ago

The copyright assignment policy dates from very early in GPL history, when it was broadly thought that in order to make copyleft work the FSF was going to have to sue entities that had misappropriated GPL software. Doing that is harder when you start from a position of having to prove that you even own the relevant copyright in the first place. It turns out this didn't happen. People who want to use free software and to stay legal just... honored the license. People who didn't want to do so used other software. And the only people who actually were breaking the license turned out to be tiny fly-by-night operations in parts of the world where copyright litigation wasn't a very useful tool anyway.

nullc 5y ago
The GPL has been regularly violated by huge multi-billion dollar corporations. But the FSF has had a policy of favoring compliance and forgiveness over punishment, and they've aggressively avoided litigation-- instead preferring to negotiate for compliance with goodwill loss as the threat-- to the point of contributing to some splits in free software. E.g. this is a point of disagreement between SFC and FSF.
- warp 5y ago
  There doesn't seem to be any disagreement on GPL enforcement between SFC and FSF: - https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.htm... - https://www.fsf.org/licensing/enforcement-principles https://www.fsf.org/licensing/enforcement-principles
  - nullc 5y ago
    They don't disagree on the general ideology, at least on paper, but when it comes to enforcement actions SFC is much more prone to litigate than the FSF. IIRC FSF has only sued once, conservancy has like 100x the rate of lawsuits per years-existed. :P
- bombcar 5y ago
  Haven't a significant number of the multi-billion dollar violations turned out to be rather "oh we didn't know" as opposed to intentional malice?

gumby 5y ago

The concern is that in a legal dispute, the FSF might not have legal standing (I.e. in a lawsuit) if the code had been contributed by and remained the property of someone else. And what if that person could not be found. I wrote the blanket assignment back in 1989 or 1990. I still consider this a legitimate risk.

tobias3 5y ago
One could see this in action in the Hellwig vs VMWare court case (one of the few GPL court cases). As a first step they had to show that Hellwig had made changes to code that VMWare uses that can be copyrighted. Especially difficult since every line in Linux is modified by a few different people. They failed at that and that ended the lawsuit if I remember correctly.