copyright assignments gone wild, or why i can not join Canonical's contributor agreement program
Sep 22, 2010, 13:33 (1 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Aaron Seigo)
"When it comes to organizations involved in tending to Free
software projects, I personally take a view that is probably deeply
colored by my previous life experiences in business. Which is to
say, it's probably a bit boring, conservative and balances out my
raging enthusiasm for community.
"In my opinion, there is a responsibility for such organizations
to identify, define and manage risks related to the responsibility
of oversight of what is a very valuable item: the intellectual and
creative work embodied in the software products. This is ignored
only at great risk to the software, its users and those responsible
for the continued development of the software. As a whole, the Free
software ecosystem fails more than it succeeds in this, though it
is getting better every year.
"As a result, I see on a disturbingly regular basis non-profit
foundations causing problems for the projects they were formed to
support because such oversight was not well defined or managed.
(Personally, I feel that a professionally managed service to create
and build in the right oversight tools would be invaluable to the
Free software community; too many hackers screw this up badly with
significant consequences, which is understandable in the sense that
they are hackers not lawyers or business people. Linux Foundation,
FSFE: are you listening? :)"
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