Re: Bitkeeper outrage, old and new

Jeff Garzik
2002-10-20T17:39:35Z

Ben Collins wrote:
>>The whole point of the copyright assignment is that FSF becomes
>>copyright owner.
>>
>>This is so that Jeff Garzik cannot be strongarmed into changing the
>>license on his code, or some other anti-software-freedom tactic levied
>>against me in the future. In theory, the FSF as an organization will
>>protect the rights of the software when I might weaken and give in.
>>
>>But in exchange for that protection, you are willingly giving up your
>>rights as copyright owner... Less freedom for [hopefully] better
>>protection. Just like everything in life, it's a tradeoff... :)
>>
>
>
> I disagree. I don't see anything in the copyright assignment (and I have
> signed a few for the FSF) that says I don't retain original copyright
> for my work.

If you keep a copy locally, sure. But the upstream sources, i.e. what's
important, you lose rights to even though you may have contributed
substantial amounts of code. IOW if binutils goes off in a direction
you don't like, for example the FSF changes the license from GPL to
Microsoft EULA, you don't have any say in the matter whatsoever. You're
left with a code fork based on the last GPL sources and/or the patches
you've kept locally.

With Linux, I have a say in what happens to the upstream sources -- the
thing most people care about :)

Jeff