Re: Emacs CLA requirement

[Phil Sainty]

I'm not a lawyer, but I can only presume that
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html still applies?

If so then I imagine it's every bit as necessary as it's ever
been -- an annoying (but generally minor) hurdle to contribution
which is nevertheless necessary for the FSF to have the ability
to defend the code legally (which I presume remains important).

My take on this has always been that FSF legal people understand
the issues and have spent many, many hours thinking about them;
whereas I rather suspect that *most* of the people complaining
about the need for copyright assignment do not have the same
level of understanding.

The arguments I've *seen* against copyright assignment have
generally been based on convenience -- it's annoying, and so
people won't contribute because it's annoying.  I don't recall
seeing arguments which actually address the reasons that
assignment is required in the first place.  I don't see how
the requirement could be dropped without addressing those
specific issues.

I haven't been following any GCC or glibc discussions, though.
If they have reliably determined that the FSF can in fact
legally defend arbitrary GNU project code by itself, without
the involvement of any other copyright holders, then perhaps
the situation is different.


-Phil