Re: Copyright/license issues (was: [COMMIT] sign & encrypt changes)

[Sean Neakums <sneakums@zork.net>]

commence  Per Abrahamsen quotation:

>> Only when somebody proves in court that GNU license really works,
>> they will become "legal".
>
> When the GPL has proven itself in court, one of several reasons to
> insist on a single copyright owner will be removed.  You need a single
> copyright owner (or at least strong disclaimers from the other owners)
> to change the license.

However, I believe the primary reason that the FSF requires copyright
to be assigned to it is that it has received legal advice that any
actions it might take against copyright violations would be much
weakened if it did not hold copyright on all the code in question.  It
has little to do with the GPL itself, apart from the fact that the GPL
is a copyright license.  This is touched on here:

http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-violation.html

> Note that the GPL, and other copyleft licenses, are copyright
> licenses. This means that only the copyright holders are empowered
> to act against violations. The FSF acts on all GPL violations
> reported on FSF copyrighted code, and we offer assistance to any
> other copyright holder who wishes to do the same.
>
> But, we cannot act on our own if we do not hold copyright. Thus, be
> sure to find out who the copyright holders of the software are
> before reporting a violation.

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