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Deliberately relinquishing power means we can't be corrupted. :-) If the backer community wants closed source versions to exist, we feel it should be on even f

Deliberately relinquishing power means we can't be corrupted. :-) If the backer community wants closed source versions to exist, we feel it should be on even footing based on a permissive license, not based on the whims of the founding team. Also, copyright assignments are a burden which makes people less likely to contribute in the first place. We don't want any such burdens, getting folks to take part is hard enough as it is.

jordigh 11y ago
Copyright assignments haven't really slowed down Emacs contributions, which has hundreds of contributors over the years. And for those who don't or can't do the assignment, well, there's a huge group of people who are doing Emacs packages outside of core. Emacs's extensibility helps here. As to corruption of power, you can include in the copyright assignment contract that you will only ever use the copyright to give specific individuals the same rights as they would have under some permissive software, except for the right to give it without copyleft to someone else. Allowing people to create non-free derivative works via a license exception is no worse than allowing people to create them via lack of copyleft. Not that it matters, like you say, but I feel very strongly about selling exceptions. It's no worse than free software without copyleft, and it opens up a revenue stream most projects decide to simply relinquish.
- the_why_of_y 11y ago
  There's a big difference between a 501(c)(3) non-profit like the FSF asking for copyright assignment, and a for-profit corporation doing the same. The latter creates an uneven playing field, and other corporations are generally loath to assign their "IP" to a competitor, which tends to prevent the mutually beneficial collaboration that is the biggest advantage of successful open source projects.
toomuchtodo 11y ago
> Deliberately relinquishing power means we can't be corrupted. :-) Nicely done!

jordigh 11y ago

Copyright assignments haven't really slowed down Emacs contributions, which has hundreds of contributors over the years. And for those who don't or can't do the assignment, well, there's a huge group of people who are doing Emacs packages outside of core. Emacs's extensibility helps here. As to corruption of power, you can include in the copyright assignment contract that you will only ever use the copyright to give specific individuals the same rights as they would have under some permissive software, except for the right to give it without copyleft to someone else. Allowing people to create non-free derivative works via a license exception is no worse than allowing people to create them via lack of copyleft. Not that it matters, like you say, but I feel very strongly about selling exceptions. It's no worse than free software without copyleft, and it opens up a revenue stream most projects decide to simply relinquish.

the_why_of_y 11y ago
There's a big difference between a 501(c)(3) non-profit like the FSF asking for copyright assignment, and a for-profit corporation doing the same. The latter creates an uneven playing field, and other corporations are generally loath to assign their "IP" to a competitor, which tends to prevent the mutually beneficial collaboration that is the biggest advantage of successful open source projects.

toomuchtodo 11y ago

> Deliberately relinquishing power means we can't be corrupted. :-) Nicely done!