Re: Assignment legal documents?

[Joe Buck <jbuck at synopsys dot com>]

On Tue, Oct 15, 2002 at 04:45:36PM -0700, Kendall Bennett wrote:
> > I was reading about the GNU C and legal requirements for contributors, 
> > and discovered that copyright has to be assigned to the FSF to 
> > contribute. I tried to find the forms used to assign copyright, but they 
> > don't appear to be on the web.

Phil Edwards writes:
> They aren't, unfortunately.  (Ask the FSF about this if you really want
> to know why.)

There are two issues, I think that the FSF is right about the first and
wrong about the second.

First, why aren't the actual legal forms available?  Answer: because when
they were available, people would download them, change clauses they
didn't like, and send them back, and RMS personally would have to read
every word to catch this.  Since they are contracts, the FSF wants to send
you two printed copies that RMS (or someone else in authority) has already
signed, for you to sign and send back.  It's actually better and faster
this way.  So instead the FSF has forms to request forms (fill in the
info that has to be written into the contract).

Second, why aren't the forms to request the forms available?  Here there
was a problem with people choosing the wrong form, such as the form to
assign work already done when no work has been done yet.  RMS wanted the
maintainers of the specific GNU projects (i.e. us) to talk to prospective
contributors first, figure out what they want to do, and figure out what
forms they need.  I'm less happy with this one; I think that obtaining the
correct answer can be done in a mechanical fashion.  Imagine a nice
form-based interface that quizzes the potential contributor and winds up
determining what form to send, resulting in a nice set of forms getting
printed out in duplicate in the FSF's office, along with an addressed
envelope, all ready to sign and mail.

But the FSF is no different than many other organizations driven mostly by
volunteer or cheap labor: they tend to be backward and have
labor-intensive practices.