Re: Display X-Face and save space

[Wes Hardaker <wjhardaker@ucdavis.edu>]

>>>>> On Tue, 26 Sep 2000 14:49:03 +0100, Dave Love <d.love@dl.ac.uk> said:

WH> Why they need to "own" the copyright makes no sense to me.

Dave> I'm not sure making sense is relevant in law.

Good point.

Dave> The longstanding legal advice -- apparently not just to the FSF
Dave> -- is that for defence in court against violations of the
Dave> licence there should be a single copyright holder, or perhaps
Dave> only a few.  I'm not sure of the exact position; maybe all
Dave> holders of copyright in a combined work have to be involved.  In
Dave> exceptional circumstances there is a specific licence to the FSF
Dave> instead of assignment.
...
WH> Filling out the form once wouldn't prevent me from writing more
WH> code in the future to the same piece and that code wouldn't be
WH> owned by them (unless they explicitly cover future modifications
WH> in their form).

Dave> That's what it normally says.

Yes, but what if I don't trust the FSF to always keep the copyright in
a form that I like it (GPLed).  If they own the copyright, they have
the right to stop distributing future changes made to it under the GPL
(the copyright owner is the *only* person that can do this.  The GPL
only protects *other* people from releasing it under a different
arrangement).

-- 
"Ninjas aren't dangerous.  They're more afraid of you than you are of them."