Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SF Conservancy now accepting copyright assignment for any GPL software

sfconservancy.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 161 posts

Re: SF Conservancy now accepting copyright assignment for any GPL software

#71

Post by HWR_14 »

onphonenow wrote: post #16

Quick note that the SF Conservancy has been advancing a scary new approach to liability with GPL. Historically, the rights and responsibilities related to GPL comes from the copyright holder. If the GPL was not followed, the person who wrote the code could optionally take action. This actually works out pretty well, because folks who actually code tend NOT to file frivioulus type legal cases and things were reasonabl…

> If the GPL was not followed, the person who wrote the code could optionally take action. This actually works out pretty well, because folks who actually code tend NOT to file frivioulus type legal cases

That never made sense to me. AFAIK, in many GPL projects there are numerous copyright holders. Therefore, who is going to be the one to sue over the issues and optional seek damages. If all the SF Conservancy wants is the ability to sue violators, why aren't they paying someone to develop a few lines to the Linux kernel and every other project. Then, they can have standing to sue. Of course, it doesn't give them standing to license everyone else's code, but if they want to sue it works.

Re: SF Conservancy now accepting copyright assignment for any GPL software

#72

Post by lokar »

mistrial9 wrote: post #43
blagie wrote: post #26

Legally, this is a screw. DO NOT sign this form. I'd love for SFC to have _joint_ copyright with me. I'd be glad to assign them copyright to odd lines of my code, while I keep the even ones, for instance. If they do enforcement for me, that's great. If damages help sustain their operations, so much the better. However, this assignment allows them to: - Sell my GPL code to Apple for use in their new iPad - Relicense m…

> not-for-profits drift from their roots, in one case, even selling all similar assets and rights to a for-profit that is a neat trick, since a non-profit cannot own and sell assets like that, that I know of, in the USA. details? hogwash?

Search for "deaccession" as an example

Re: SF Conservancy now accepting copyright assignment for any GPL software

#73

Post by wrycoder »

blagie wrote: post #26

Legally, this is a screw. DO NOT sign this form. I'd love for SFC to have _joint_ copyright with me. I'd be glad to assign them copyright to odd lines of my code, while I keep the even ones, for instance. If they do enforcement for me, that's great. If damages help sustain their operations, so much the better. However, this assignment allows them to: - Sell my GPL code to Apple for use in their new iPad - Relicense m…

SFC is an enemy of Richard Stallman.

In spite of the fact that the SFC would not exist without RMS, they explicitly supported the attempt to eject him from the Free Software Foundation on the basis of trumped up allegations.

The SFC is Brad Kuhn's attempt to profit off the GPL, which he couldn't do when he was associated with the FSF or the Software Freedom Law Center.

Re: SF Conservancy now accepting copyright assignment for any GPL software

#74

Post by mistrial9 »

mikeyouse wrote: post #57
bawolff wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-profits can sell assets if its in accordance with their mission. Why wouldn't they be able to?

They can sell them if not in accordance with their mission by paying taxes on the sale as well (UBIT). There are very few restrictions on what a nonprofit can and can’t do. https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/tools-resources/unrelate...

in the USA ? that is absolutely not true.. could an actual experienced attorney please look into this ... I think you people are confused about "selling t-shirts" versus disposal of actual assets.

Re: SF Conservancy now accepting copyright assignment for any GPL software

#75

Post by robonerd »

HWR_14 wrote: post #67
onphonenow wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just curious here. If I as a developer want to license my code a certain way (and enforce that license in a certain way) what authority do these lawyers have to tell me I'm "stupid". Especially if my approach has single handedly created the largest body of copyleft / collaborative / open source software out there with massive amounts of actual collaboration. The irony is so strong here. Basically jerks, who can't…

> If I as a developer want to license my code a certain way (and enforce that license in a certain way) what authority do these lawyers have to tell me I'm "stupid". The exact same authority developers have when they tell their clients that they cannot run a 1,000,000 person site off the phone they forget to charge sometimes. Or even a designer telling a client their color scheme is poor (it clashes, isn't color-blin…

> They aren't saying Linus's goals are stupid. They're saying the methods he's using to achieve the goals are. Which makes sense.

So if lawyers were in charge and rampaged around suing the shit out of every company that made a mistake when using Linux, that would better suit Linus's goals? Only Linus can speak to Linus's goals, but I doubt this is what Linus really wants.

Re: SF Conservancy now accepting copyright assignment for any GPL software

#76

Post by mistrial9 »

lokar wrote: post #72
mistrial9 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not-for-profits drift from their roots, in one case, even selling all similar assets and rights to a for-profit that is a neat trick, since a non-profit cannot own and sell assets like that, that I know of, in the USA. details? hogwash?

Search for "deaccession" as an example

this is probably reasonable .. the others are less so

Re: SF Conservancy now accepting copyright assignment for any GPL software

#77

Post by jcranmer »

onphonenow wrote: post #58
throwaway82652 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If I as a developer want to license my code a certain way (and enforce that license in a certain way) what authority do these lawyers have to tell me I'm "stupid". Are you willing to represent yourself in court? If the answer is no, then that's an admission you are stupider than a lawyer when it comes to legal matters. Nothing wrong with it, I have no problem admitting it myself. Let the programmers handle the progr…

I'd skip the name calling. You fail to understand how copyright works. If I'm the creator of the work, I have the copyright to it. And yes, I'd be happy to represent myself if SFC came along and told me I could or couldn't do something with the code I wrote because that makes no sense. I can choose a license, I can dual license, I can re-license future releases and I can stop providing updates under any of those lice…

> If I'm the creator of the work, I have the copyright to it.

Not necessarily. For example, work for hire, or copyright being assigned to the employer. Or maybe the work itself isn't copyrightable in the first place. There's even a fun provision where US government work doesn't have any copyright in the first place! You might also have transferred the copyright of your work after you created it in a way which doesn't give you any retained rights.

Re: SF Conservancy now accepting copyright assignment for any GPL software

#78

Post by samatman »

mistrial9 wrote: post #74
mikeyouse wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can sell them if not in accordance with their mission by paying taxes on the sale as well (UBIT). There are very few restrictions on what a nonprofit can and can’t do. https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/tools-resources/unrelate...

in the USA ? that is absolutely not true.. could an actual experienced attorney please look into this ... I think you people are confused about "selling t-shirts" versus disposal of actual assets.

I think you're confused about what an asset is.

Be it a T-shirt, a building, or IP, if a nonprofit owns it they can sell or license it.

Re: SF Conservancy now accepting copyright assignment for any GPL software

#79

Post by athrun »

onphonenow wrote: post #55
stefan_ wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears to me that this post of yours involves lots of handwaving and appeals to history while the GPL continues to be ignored (look no further than e.g. Tesla). Where is the hyperbolic let them leverage a very extreme position when some open source project asks for copyright assignment?

The issue the SFC has had is that folks like Linus and other developers are not interested AT ALL in their approach to enforcement or their interpretation of the GPL. Since code talks and talk walks, they are not left with a ton. The Affero GPLv3 fell totally flat. GPLv3 pretty flat (Samba was a big adopter maybe? Not sure what growth they saw after that). Some of the SFC enforcement saw a big move / growth in MIT st…

> Some of the SFC enforcement saw a big move / growth in MIT style licenses (no copyleft elements really) which is a big tragedy as well as a fracturing of licensing (another miss in my book).

indeed. Tragedy is the right word!

Re: SF Conservancy now accepting copyright assignment for any GPL software

#80

Post by lakecresva »

dolni wrote: post #62
lakecresva wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because 99.9% of developers aren't willing to suffer the time and expense of investigating violations and enforcing their copyrights in federal court.

So why can't the SF Conservancy assist by making resources available to developers who are interested? If pro bono legal representation were provided, I wager a number of developers would take up that offer.

I can't speak for them, but I can tell you that would add an enormous amount of overhead and risk for the lawyers involved. If you assign them your copyrights, their job is just to find GPL violations from the pool of projects they have the rights to and then initiate an action in court, which they do for a living. Without assignment, they can no longer proactively investigate with any reasonable chance of success, and they have to find a violation that's in a goldilocks zone; they need a GPL author whose rights have been violated and is willing to make a long term commitment to actively participating in litigation, that they know will communicate with them as needed, and who won't suddenly move to Nepal or be convinced by people online that they need to drop the suit or something.
Post reply on HN