FLA

[Marc Mutz]

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On Thursday 06 February 2003 10:38, Chris Schlaeger wrote:
<snip>
> You should explain the benefits you see in doing so. In my opinion
> the KDE Project is _much_ safer with a widely distributed copyright.
> Assigning all copyrights to a single entity makes us weaker and more
> prone to an attack than stronger.
<snip>

Devil's advocate, hu?

You should read the FLA first ;-)
It's much like the trademark assignment we signed in Hamburg.

Basically, a widely distributed "copyright" doesn't make us safer, but=20
indeed much less safe. If you want to continue this line of thought,=20
just think about the possibility that the GPL was challenged in court=20
and certain clauses were found to be void.

=46SF(E) would strive to fix the GPL, of course. But we'd had a hard time=20
to find all the copyright holders for a given piece of code to obtain=20
their permission to change the license.

Or have a look at just how difficult it is to get everyone from the=20
KMail contributors to permit adding the Qt exception to the license.=20
Had all contributors assigned their rights (usage or copyright,=20
depending on the authorship model) to the e.V., we'd just have to ask=20
the e.V. to give fiduciary permission to go ahead and we'd be done.

But the most important part of the picture is IMO that if we get to know=20
about a (L)GPL violation w.r.t. KDE code, all we can do currently is to=20
hope that any of the individual contributors would resort to taking=20
legal action. Not that likely, isn't it, given the (financial) risks=20
and the amount of time and money involved to prepare a injunction or=20
whatever it takes to respond officially to the violation.

Another thing to worry about is the death of contributors, which is also=20
covered by the FLA.

Marc

=2D-=20
You can fool some people sometimes
But you can't fool all the people all the time        -- Bob Marley

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