Re: On Contributing To Emacs

[Stefan Kangas]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> You and I are not lawyers, so I don't think we're qualified to make
> statements against those of trained professionals.

I think that this oft-repeated argument is based on some important
misunderstandings.  We will do well to listen to what trained
professionals think about the legal aspects of this, of course.

But first, I think it is important to note that this is *not* clear-cut.
Siddhesh Poyarekar made this point on the Glibc mailing list this
summer:

    Lawyers are not a collective, IP lawyers, less so.  I have spoken to
    and listened to multiple legal experts over the years to get their
    opinion on the subject and in my experience the opinion is quite
    divided and definitely more nuanced than A > B.  I made that
    conclusion for myself based on those opinions.

    https://sourceware.org/pipermail/libc-alpha/2021-June/128083.html

Second, it is also important to note that lawyers have no formal
expertise in how free software projects work or should best be managed.
They have no expertise in assessing the significant drawbacks that this
brings to a free software project, and how that should be weighed
against the legal advantages they perceive (or not) with having a
copyright assignment.

See here for more:

    https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2014/jun/09/do-not-need-cla/