Re: On Contributing To Emacs

[Po Lu]

Theodor Thornhill <theo@thornhill.no> writes:

> One other thing noone seems to mention is that when you change jobs, you
> have to do it all over again.  Having to go over this in a new job while
> trying to settle in socially and professionally is suboptimal.  I'm
> lucky my latest employer has no such "we own your free time as well as
> work time" clause, so I don't have to do all over again.
>
> I also don't view this as tangential to emacs development, as this is a
> major hurdle for many people to contribute.

My employer has rules on checking the "ownership" of free software
projects employees contribute to.  With Emacs, the parts not under FSF
copyright are either under the copyright of the Japanese government
(MULE), or too insignificant to matter, which makes that process simple.

If the copyright status were to become any more complicated, then we
would have to go through months of paperwork before doing any work on
Emacs (or more importantly, GCC, which we work on during the day.)

This is a major problem with X, especially since the headers regularly
mention defunct organizations whose "assets" are troublesome to track
down.