[dot] FSFE Welcomes KDE's Adoption of the Fiduciary Licence Agreement

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URL: http://dot.kde.org/1219405212/

From: Sebastian Kuegler <sebas at kde.org>
Dept: freedom-task-force
Date: Friday 22/Aug/2008, @04:40

FSFE Welcomes KDE's Adoption of the Fiduciary Licence Agreement
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   Free Software Foundation Europe welcomes the adoption of the
Fiduciary Licence Agreement by the K Desktop Environment project. The
FLA is a copyright assignment that allows Free Software projects to
assign their copyright to a single organisation or person. This enables
projects to ensure their legal maintainability, including important
issues such as preserving the ability to re-license and certainty to
have sufficient rights to enforce licences in court.  "We see the
adoption of the FLA by KDE as a positive and important milestone in the
maturity of the Free Software community," says Georg Greve, president of
Free Software Foundation Europe. "The FLA was designed to help projects
increase the legal maintainability of their software to ensure long-term
protection and reliability. KDE is among the most important Free
Software initiatives and it is playing a central role in bringing
freedom to the desktop. This decision of the KDE project underlines its
dedication to think about how to make that freedom last." Read on for
more details.

     Adriaan de Groot, Vice President of KDE e.V., the organisation
behind the KDE project, said "KDE e.V. has endorsed the use of a
particular FLA based directly on the FSFE's sample FLA as the preferred
way to assign copyright to the association.  We recognise that
assignment is an option that individuals may wish to exercise; it is in
no way pushed upon KDE contributors. There are also other avenues of
copyright assignment available besides the FLA, but we believe this is
the easiest way to get it done, with little fuss. Enthusiasm for the FLA
was immediate - people were asking for printed versions of the form at
Akademy before the week was out so that they could fill one in."

     "The FLA is a versatile document designed to work across different
countries with different perceptions of copyright and authorship," says
Shane Coughlan, Freedom Task Force coordinator.  "As a truly
international project, KDE provides a great example of how the FLA can
provide legal coherency in the mid-to-long term.  It's been a pleasure
to help with the adoption process and FSFE's Freedom Task Force is ready
to continuing supporting KDE in the future."
     KDE's adoption of the FLA is the result of cooperation between KDE
e.V. and FSFE's Freedom Task Force over the last year and a half, part
of the deepening collaboration between the two associate organisations.

     The full press release can be found on KDE e.V.'s website.
 [http://ev.kde.org/announcements/2008-08-22-fsfe-welcomes-fla.php]