Re: Coppyright assignment

[Ludovic Courtès]

Justus Winter <4winter@informatik.uni-hamburg.de> skribis:

> Quoting Ludovic Courtès (2016-03-04 13:49:09)
>> Justus Winter <4winter@informatik.uni-hamburg.de> skribis:
>> 
>> > I have learned that not all GNU projects require this.  For example,
>> > GnuPG uses DCO [0], and Guix doesn't even seem to require that.
>> >
>> > Maybe we can change this policy for Hurd, GNU Mach, and MIG too?
>> 
>> I general, we “cannot” (i.e., are invited not to) change GNU packages
>> from requiring-assignment to no-assignment policy (although I guess
>> GnuPG did exactly that…).
>
> So one can do that.

Everything can be done, but ultimately it’s a matter of reaching
consensus.

> I see it as an barrier for contributing.

Right, but whether it’s a good idea depends on a number of other
factors.  For Guix, copyright assignment would have been a hindrance
IMO, but what’s at stake is different than for libc or GCC, for
instance.

>> Hopefully paperwork is fast enough these days anyway.
>
> I don't know how it is nowadays (maybe someone can enlighten us?), but
> when I did that like three years ago the process took weeks and
> required quite a bit of nagging.

Use of PDFs has helped a bit:

  https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Papers.html

as well as digital signatures in some cases:

  
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/fsf-to-begin-accepting-gpg-signed-assignments-from-the-u-s
  
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/fsf-to-begin-accepting-gpg-signatures-for-copyright-assignments-from-italy

Ludo’.