Re: On Contributing To Emacs

[Óscar Fuentes]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> The copyright assignment requirement is not forced on us by external
>> factors.  With few exceptions, the rest of the free software world
>> lives happily without it.  Emacs *choose* to use it in the hope that
>> it will give some legal advantages in a future GPL violation case.
>
> IIRC, Emacs did not make that choice arbitrarily, but under the advice
> of legal professionals hired by the FSF.

You are assuming that those lawyers said "You shall definitely do this"
and the FSF followed suit, but we don't know the internal process of
that decision. Possibly the lawyers said "you could do A or B or C, and
we estimate that the risks and benefits are such and such" and then the
FSF chose the option that best suited them. Or it could be that the FSF
said to the lawyers "we want maximum protection" (leaving other factors
aside) and the lawyers complied.

>> Glibc and GCC have recently moved to use a DCO instead.  I think we
>> should follow their lead.
>
> You and I are not lawyers, so I don't think we're qualified to make
> statements against those of trained professionals.

Again, you are assuming things, namely, that the decision about using
the DCO was not backed by lawyers.