Re: Manual contributions and copyright assignments

[Richard Stallman <rms at gnu dot org>]

    RMS, how do you suggest to proceed practically?

I wouldn't want to start micro-managing you ;-).

						     This seems to affect more
    than 100 developers with CVS write access, any of which can commit patches
    of her/his own or others,

You surely have some policies about which areas any given person can
commit changes in.  Right?  So it is a matter of changing these policies.

			      and about 700 contributors overall (according to
    /gd/gnuorg/copyright.list).

What problem do they raise?


I am worried about the idea that all 100 people with write access can
install others' changes.  That means we depend on all 100 of them to
check properly for legal papers.  It is unreliable to have 100 people
doing this!

I have no objection to your allowing 100 people to install their own
changes--if you trust them, that's good enough for me.  But unless you
have very effective procedures for making sure all 100 people check
papers properly, you should greatly reduce the people who are allowed
to install changes other than their own.

One idea is that each of these 100 people can have a list of those
whose changes he can install.  Some of them, you could trust to check
papers just as you do.  But most of them would have a specific list of
names.  If a person wants to add a name to his list, he asks you,
and you check the papers.