[Sussex] GPL and copyright

[Geoffrey Teale]

On Wednesday 06 July 2005 16:13, Chris Jones wrote:
> Aren't there some arguments about a consistent body of copyright being
> easier to defend than having to track down dozens of people who own a
> copyright on the odd line here and there to fight your case?

Yes, but that is served by handing your copyright to a benevolent body like 
the FSF or the EFF, not by handing them to a specific developer or company. 

> You say that like there's something underhand about it ;)

There can be.  I don't mean that the CUPS guys are evil, they explicitly state 
the reasoning, but someone who wants the copyright without telling you why is 
to be held at arms length.

> You could license it to yourself under more favourable terms before
> assigning the copyright, I would think?

If you give someone else the copyright it is not yours to license.  You cannot 
offer in contract something that you do not own.  Whether this would be a 
problem retroactively is something you'd have to ask an IP lawyer - I suspect 
the answer differs from country to country.  


> and don't mind them changing the license. I once started a (doomed)
> project on savannah and I explicitly marked the license as GPL version 2,
> rather than "version 2 or later" as the FSF preferrs and they were
> actually very pushy to persuade me to change it to the "or later" version.
> I did relent because it wasn't very important, but really you shouldn't be
> giving someone else that kind of power - god only knows what Stallman and
> Moglen will stuff into v3.

There is an open discussion of the intent of v3 on www.fsf.org .  If you don't 
trust the FSF don't assign copyright.  We do have an agenda but it is a very 
clear and open one.

> Personally I would never assign copyright to the FSF on a whole project,
> but I would be happy to assign copyright away for additions/modifications
> to an existing program - if I'm just patching something then I'm going to
> always have a copy of it under the GPL, so unless I've written some
> significant original code then I'm not really losing anything by assigning
> the copyright, but the project involved gains cohesion and some
> flexibility (even if that is to fork a closed source version, not that
> they can ever revoke the GPL'd version).

They can stop maintaining the GPL'd one.  It might not die (someone might pick 
it up) but you may end up with no useful version of your code available under 
the GPL, but proprietary versions making money for somebody.  This kind of 
undermimes what the GPL is about.

> And you trust the FSF. I would say that handing code over to anyone is the
> same deal, you lose control either way. 

Agreed, I was just trying to reassure you that the FSF are trustworthy.  If 
you don't want to lose control then always maintain your own copyright.

> Whether they put it in a 
> commercial project tomorrow or in 10 years time or never is no longer
> anything to do with you and I see no reason to assume the FSF is going to
> hold to the current ideals forever ;)

Hmm, I think that you could classify it as deeply unlikely that an 
organisation that has existed for 21 years with the sole mission of 
supporting Free Software is going to turn into a proprietary software vendor.   
That said the point that the FSF might make subtle changes to their use of 
the code is a valid one.  Do as you feel best.

-- 
Geoffrey Teale
Cmed Research  //  Free Software Foundation