Re: Please explain the FSF copyright assignment thing

[Filipe Silva]

Ok. I get that. But why, why it is legally required? What harm will descent upon us all if an official component of emacs is distributed which hasn't had it's copyright assigned to FSF?

On Jul 13, 2017 15:37, "Karl Fogel" <address@hidden> wrote:

John Yates <address@hidden> writes:
>Perhaps you should ask why Richard decided that Magit, among all
>of the many non-FSF copyright assigned packages that emacs users
>recommend to one another, was so intolerable as to justify suggesting
>mounting a - to my mind doomed - competing project.  It was not as if
>all of those recommendations are for some proprietary or non-GPL-V3+
>package.

Richard didn't do anything special in this case.  He's fine with Magit being distributed as free software, and fine with Emacs users downloading and using Magit.  People are still free to "recommend [Magit] to one another", just as with any free software.

The copyright assignment thing is solely about Magit being distributed *as an official component of the GNU Emacs distribution*.  All the packages that are part of Emacs itself have always needed these copyright assignments.  I'm not commenting on whether this is legally necessary or not.  I'm just saying that the request here is exactly the same as the FSF has always made for every other package that would be distributed as part of Emacs.  Magit did not get singled out for special treatment.

-K