Re: Copyright assignment requirement

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

Gregory Casamento wrote:
>     What problems would this solve?  I believe we would have a larger
>     variety
>
>         of people contributing to gnustep and it would ultimately
>         remove what some
>         see as a barrier to entry since some people don't want to
>         disclaim or
>         assign their copyrights.
>
>     I am seeing instead other projects I participate in, where a lot
>     more patch review and discussion happens on the mailing list. 
>
>
> Actually part if the issue with discussion is that's all it ends up 
> as.  Discussion.  Nothing ever comes of it.

Culture, we do not encourage it happening. I see what happens on 
projects ranging from OpenBSD, mingw... to even GNU-HURD!
I see tons of patches flowing in the HURD mailing list, believe it or 
not, reviewed, commented...

> A patch would be so much better than a discussion. Would it not?

Patches exist only if somebody works on them, if you encourage them and 
take care of them. Your sarcasm is out of place.

>     the patches should have been, in small pieces, put on the mailing
>     list. It happened once but in a big-chunk manner.
>
>
> Why tolerate doing it this way when you have a built in system for 
> dealing with the patches.

Again, your sarcasm is out of place. I cite how I see other projects 
work and strive discussion and collaboration and comparing it to our 
current situation.

You are suggesting that the change of platform with social coding would 
give a surge of collaboration and for what you want to remove copyright 
assignment.

I point out that we could do the same without changing platform, but by 
working with our beloved mailing list.
Also, we should give up the mailing list then and go towards forum and 
ticket post communication.

>     Thus, by logical reasoning, my conclusion is that it wouldn't
>     change without a license change, that is at minimum stopping being
>     a FSF project (what good would be it if the forks wouldn't?),
>     changing license to a full GPL/LGPL v2+ or even to a BSD style
>     license.
>
>
> Incorrect.  A license change is not necessary.  Only the removal of 
> the copyright assignment mandate is. The same could be achieved by 
> forking the project entirely.
Not necessary, but useful to take your reasoning of benefits to its maximum.

It could be interesting to switch back to v2+ though, it would be worth 
discussing.

And if you ask "how do you feel moving to git" or "how do you feel about 
removing copyright requirement" my answer is simple: short.

Riccardo