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From: | Uday S Reddy |
Subject: | Re: The copyright issue |
Date: | Fri, 06 Aug 2010 17:39:29 +0100 |
User-agent: | Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) |
Anybody, including a private corporation, can use the FSF codebase to develop their variants, but Gnu Emacs can't use their enhancements to enrich itself.
I am sorry. The intent of my statement was:Anybody can use the FSF codebase to develop their variants, but Gnu Emacs can't use their enhancements to enrich itself unless they assign the copyright to FSF.
Having titled my post "the copyright issue" I forgot to mention copyright again.It seemed to me from from Stephen's statement that David Reitter's enhancements had aspects that could not be copyrighted by FSF. But there are also other instances where the problem is acute, e.g., in taking stuff from XEmacs or in including VM in the Gnu distribution etc.
In all cases, it is the free software that I am talking about. It seems odd to me that Gnu and FSF do not simply embrace all forms of free software.
That is not inherently the case. GNU Emacs (and many other of the GNU projects that enforce the FSF copyright policy) does include enhancements provided by private corporations. The corporation simply has to sign the necessary paperwork, which they usually do without much trouble.
I am really glad to hear that corporations do that. But it might actually be easier for corporations to sign over the copyright than it is for private groups. Many people contribute over the years and they get dispersed. Even if one of them is unable or unwilling to assign copyright to FSF, Gnu has to stay away. So, it seems that Gnu has needlessly isolated itself on an island from which it cannot escape. There is an ocean of free software outside Gnu, but Gnu can't touch it. Isn't it absurd?
Cheers, Uday
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