Re: Drop the Copyright Assignment requirement for Emacs

[Stefan Monnier]

> (and I do note you'd still have to go through the horrors of finding a
> pen and paper in your office and manually using your arms to hold
> it up to the webcam)

[ FWIW, for me until about a year or two ago, the problem was not so much
  finding a pen, but finding a scanner or a camera.  ]

Many parts of the assignment process could be streamlined in some way.
The actual signing is one part where improvements can be possible but
AFAIK they're mostly imposed by legal issues (where the FSF wants to
make sure that the signature would be legally valid in a court of law),
so it's likely the hardest part to streamline, and I suspect that the
current situation is "good enough" that it's "out of the critical
path" nowadays.

The "critical path" is rather on the ideological side, on the "so many
steps, so much time" side (send an email to emacs-devel, then get an
email in return, the send an email to the FSF, then ... the actual
signing is a just a small part of it compared to all the waiting), and
last but not least on getting the employer to sign its part.


        Stefan