Re: Adding advisory notification for non-ELPA package.el downloads

[Nikolaus Rath]

On Jul 20 2017, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:
>> From: Paul Rankin <address@hidden>
>> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden
>> Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2017 01:58:29 +1000
>> 
>> > AFAIK, the original author still owns the code he/she wrote, even
>> > after the assignment, and the authorship information is not lost by
>> > assigning the copyright.  If that is true, then your concerns are
>> > based on misunderstandings.
>> 
>> I'm sorry to disagree with you, but no, if you assign copyright to
>> someone else, you no longer own the work. Hence why FSF licences the
>> work back to you.
>
> Yes, and after that, I still have my rights.

But not ownership. Owership entails you to certain rights, but having
these rights doesn't give you ownership. 

> If you can still work on your code after the assignment, and can
> redistribute it at will under any conditions you like, then how is
> that different from ownership?

There's more to ownership that that. Incidentally, this is the reason
why the FSF would like to have it.

> If it looks like duck, walks like duck, and quacks like duck, then how
> can it be anything other than a duck?

By that argument, the FSF should have no need for copyright assignments
in the first place. The license should be enough.


Best,
-Nikolaus

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