Re: Please explain the FSF copyright assignment thing

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > I mean the fact that a copyright owner can go rogue and change a license
  > alone without asking if the other copyright owners would agree and at the
  > same time all the copyright owners must act in cooperation in order to
  > enforce a license. This is is a sad state of affairs.

That sort of thing does happen, and it has caused problems.
Fortunately the versions already released under a free license
remain available under that free license regardless of what happens.

The copyright assignment allows us to switch to a different free software
license when we want to.

But most importantly it gives us the power to go to court to enforce
the GPL _as the copyright holder_.n

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.