FLA

[Harri Porten]

On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, Marc Mutz wrote:

> It's much like the trademark assignment we signed in Hamburg.

Which hasn't had any effect, yet.

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

I think it makes it "safer" in the respect that many people's opinions are
respected which is good for the project's stability.

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

Are there maybe some people who don't *want* their code's license changed
? Those won't assign their copyright to anyone else in the first place.

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

The problem is that KDE e.V. (we, the members) haven't made any progress
on issues like trademarking and defending violations for example. Until it
is proven to function in this area I don't have much trust in this (our)
organization to handle copyright issues any better.

That said, I don't mind anyone assigning his copyright to the FSFE or
whomever - as long it doesn't become a policy (yet).

Harri.