Re: Please explain the FSF copyright assignment thing

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
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  > Enforced freedom? nobody there was obligated to benefit from freedom.
  > What was enforced was the obligation for Cisco to transfer to their
  > clients the freedom they decided to enjoy.

You stated that very well.

The purpose of copyleft is to defend freedom for all users of our
software.  To defend their freedom requires preventing middlemen
(Cisco in that case) from stripping off the freedom when they
redistribute the software to others.

In other words, when we distribute Emacs to A,
and A redistributes Emacs to B, C and D, copyleft protects
the freedom of B, C and D by requiring
A to pass along Emacs to them with the full four freedoms.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.