Darren New escreveu:
> nemesis wrote:
>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>> nemesis wrote:
>>>> but they used to accept patches only if authors were willing to
>>>> give them the copyright, so as to "fight" any legal threats.  How evil
>>>> is that, huh? ;)
>>> Pretty evil, if you later want to release it under a different license.
>>
>> Indeed.  But then you realize your contribution is just a grain of 
>> sand among
>> many others 
> 
> Firstly, you understand that by giving the FSF the copyright, you've 
> given them permission to prevent you from releasing your own code with a 
> different license, right?

Yes, and I'm pretty sure all GPL contributors willing to do so, 
including commercial entities, are well aware of it.

> Copyright is the right to restrict others from copying your work. It's 
> not the right to copy it, but to prevent others from doing so.

Copyright gets a twist in the GPL, the so-called copyleft:  the 
copyright holder explicitely *grants* others the rights to use, copy and 
modify it, as long as it's always under the GPL.  The copyright holder 
of the original GPL'd code is still the same, but what does this mean 
when he explicitely grants others the right to use, copy and modify it?

The only power left to FSF is if they suddenly change from a foundation 
to a corporation and license the body of GNU software under a 
restrictive commercial license (though the original codebase still GPL) 
and become the next Microsoft from then on.  Pissing and laughing on all 
contributors who've given away copyrights thus far.  Perhaps they launch 
this malign plan once the HURD kernel is ready after its 30 years of 
development so far?  It'll be the perfect system to run Duke Nukem 
Forever...

Note also that, even though the official gcc and other GNU software only 
accept patches with the copyrights given to the FSF (I'm not really sure 
about this today, but for the sake of argument, let's stick with the 
notion), nothing prevents one from forking gcc and maintaining a 
personal branch of it with modifications whose copyright does not go to 
the FSF.  You can even redistribute it, under the GPL for sure, but 
you're the copyright holder only for your patches to the codebase.

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