Re: GPLv3 Position Statement

Jörn Engel
2006-09-28T09:42:27Z

On Wed, 27 September 2006 17:18:42 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> In fact, most programmers _still_ probably
> don't care. A lot of people use a license not because they "chose"
> it, but because they work on a project where somebody else chose the
> license for them originally.

s/most programmers/some programmers/

While I can only speak for myself, I definitely had to make a decision
a couple of times without starting a kernel myself. Red Hat wanted me
to sign a piece of small-font paper assigning my copyright to JFFS2
over to them. My thoughts at the time were along the lines of "What
the fuck!!" and I had a lot of thinking to do, but didn't sign it.

My graph traversion code I did for my thesis should have been merged
into gcc, but I didn't even bother sending a patch. Copyright assign
my ***, thank you very much.

And that is in fact the primary reason, hacking gcc has been fun and I
would like to do more, from a purely technical point of view. But
having to sign a large amount of legalese is the kind of thing I may
have to do for a job, and they pay me for it. It is not the kind of
thing I do for fun. No fun, no money - hell, why should I do
something like that?!?

Thank you for not requiring copyright assignments, Linus.

Jörn

--
People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them
that Benjamin Franklin said it first.
-- unknown