[OT] Copyright assignment

[Yavor Doganov]

On Wed, 30 Aug 2006 17:25:56 +0200, Chris B. Vetter wrote:

> I'm one of those who do not really WANT to sign.
[...]
> No, it's more of a generic (genetic ;-) thing that I dread signing ANY
> paperwork and I try to avoid it whenever possible.

You would go through far more hassle if you're the copyright holder.
You'd be signing lots of unpleasant paperwork if someone starts a
lawsuit.  Also, it would prevent the FSF to easily solve a license
violation (let's hope that it will never happen).  And last but not
least, the potential enemy will think twice or thrice before
commencing actions against FSF, while he might easily do it if the
defendant is John Doe.

Our Free World is not secure and there is a great threat of all kinds
of future attacks, including legal, since free software is slowly
becoming a "danger" for the proprietary empire.

Call me a <insert_whatever>, but people who are not willing to assign
copyright to the FSF do not fully understand some aspects of the Free
Software Movement.  Aside from the legal things, everyone should be
willing to surrender his (copy)rights in favour of FSF.  In an ideal
world, if FSF was holding the copyright of all free software and
functional works, our community would be much more stronger (both in
legal and defending-the-freedom aspects). 

I am always assigning copyright of my work to the FSF.  This has some
other advantages -- for example, if my translation is (C) FSF and the
copyright holder(s) of the program want to change the license from GPL
to a non-copyleft one, they'll have to ask for permission from FSF
which, hopefully, won't be given.  They'll have to exclude my
translation and thus my work won't be used to enhance a proprietary
version of the relicensed program.  It goes without saying that I'm
only translating/documenting GPL/LGPL/FDL stuff, otherwise the above
statement would be flawed, of course.

-- 
JID: doganov@jabber.minus273.org