Copyright assignment checking by PGP-signed commits (WAS: Why are so many great packages not trying to get included in GNU Emacs?)

[Noam Postavsky]

> As a package maintainer, I wouldn't have to ever check fencepost to verify 
> assignments when I receive patches.  Instead, the way I check that someone 
> has an assignment on file is by asking them to sign their commit with an 
> FSF-signed key.

I'm not sure this gives a sufficient advantage over just asking the
author whether they've done assignment. The main difference is that it
would be harder for someone to lie about it, but I'm not seeing that
as much of a risk (in the rare case where someone does lie, the commit
can still be reverted later).