[DotGNU]Licensing and copyright assignment in DotGNU

[David Sugar]

In any GPL project it is nessisary to consider and address the issue of 
copyright assignment.  Copyright assignment is particularly essential because 
the GPL operates thru copyright law, not contract law.  If there is no clear 
or clean copyright holder to the work in each part and in whole, then there is 
no party that can cleanly enforce misuse of the GPL.

The copyright holder must of course be a trusted authority.  They often get 
all the responsibilities for dealing with copyright issues and none of the 
benefits.

Our choice I think is to have copyright assignment either to FD or the FSF. 
In that the FSF is already in place and has the infrastructure to handle this, 
it would seem the logical entity to use for this purpose.

Copyright assignment is done as a written document, and the FSF does have 
copyright assignment forms.  I believe we should do this for each package that 
is initiated.  Everyone working on the packages will have to sign and return a 
copyright assignment form for that to work.

Being a GNU package does not actually require copyright assignment to the FSF 
per say, but it does generally require some clean and clear copyright 
assignment to some individual, organization, or entity that can be trusted.  I 
am not speaking authorativily about the FSF in this regard, but only 
expressing my best understanding of their policy.  Certainly doing copyright 
assignment to the FSF is simpler and more convenient than doing it with 
another entity.

There are probably others who can much better explain copyright assignment and 
how the GPL works in regard to copyright law than I could.  I wanted to make 
sure everyone on this and the main free developers list are at least aware of 
the issues involved in copyright and copyright assignment in regards to free 
and copyleft software, and in particular in regard to packages that may become 
GNU packages.  Since rms follows the main list, I am certain he will correct 
any inaccuracies I may have made here.

David