Re: How to contribute

[Michał Kruszewski]

    Alas, groff's requirement for copyright assignment to the FSF ruled
    out contributions from me many years ago after the FSF's legal
    counsel confirmed they'd hold partial copyright on a non-groff work
    which contained code of copyrightable expression if I later used it
    in groff; the order in time doesn't matter.  The FSF want 100%
    ownership to enforce copyright but deny 100% ownership of that
    earlier work in doing so.

I do not get this.
Can you elaborate or provide an example?


Best regards,
Michał Kruszewski


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------- Original Message -------
On Saturday, June 3rd, 2023 at 2:26 PM, Ralph Corderoy <ralph@inputplus.co.uk> 
wrote:


> Hi Michał,
> 
> > Where do I need to register?
> 
> 
> For any significant contribution in copyright terms, you'll have to sign
> an assignment of copyright of your work to the FSF and it's GNU groff.
> 
> https://www.fsf.org/licensing/contributor-faq
> 
> That put me off.
> 
> Alas, groff's requirement for copyright assignment to the FSF ruled
> out contributions from me many years ago after the FSF's legal
> counsel confirmed they'd hold partial copyright on a non-groff work
> which contained code of copyrightable expression if I later used it
> in groff; the order in time doesn't matter. The FSF want 100%
> ownership to enforce copyright but deny 100% ownership of that
> earlier work in doing so.
> 
> — https://www.mail-archive.com/groff@gnu.org/msg15539.html
> 
> --
> Cheers, Ralph.