With the recent activity regarding RMS wishing that someone would come up and write a replacement for magit that could be bundled inside emacs, and give FSF the whole copyright assignment, I cannot help but be intrigued: what good do these required copyright assignments do to the free software community?
I really, really tried to understand but cannot. It's hard enough for a community to be graced with the luck of having someone as Jonas Bernoulli write the magit package, give away de code as GPLv3, and actually maintain it through years. Now you have to also sign physical papers handing the copyright to the FSF. that makes the process so much difficult. What's the gain?
So what if the copyright belongs to someone else. Isn't this free software? gplv3? don't you have the four liberties?
Enlighten me, please.