Re: [O] New maintainer

[Jambunathan K]

Bastien <address@hidden> writes:

> And it does not take too big a brain to understand why: if people
> were allowed to retract their assignment when they want for changes
> that have been published, the copyright assignment process would
> undermine the whole purpose of the GPL license, which is to make
> it possible to let *others* contribute to free code.

As a maintainer of GNU project, I expect that you should have a basic
understanding of the purpose of the copyright assignment and GPL
license.  From what I read above, I am not convinced that you have the
right understanding.  Your articulation is clearly confusing and falling
short.

See 

        http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AssignCopyright

You assign copyright to FSF so that you don't have to enforce GPL.  By
assigning, one outsources the legal work of actual enforcing to FSF.
Single holder of rights just makes the legal procedures lot more easy.

A contract that cannot be enforced is worthless.  A license that you
cannot enforce is equally so.  

FSF says, assign me the rights, I will go after all the violators and
force them to comply with GPL.

Jambunathan K.