Re: Please explain the FSF copyright assignment thing

[Karl Fogel]

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