Re: Copyright assignment wiki page

[FX Coudert <fxcoudert at gmail dot com>]

> I'm afraid I have to ask to remove the form from that Wiki. :-(

You're welcome to remove it yourself, but please replace them with  
appropriate, *clear* documentation of the copyright assignment  
process. The recent past (including my own experience some years ago)  
has shown that http://gcc.gnu.org/contribute.html is not clear on  
what needs to be done, and what happens afterwards.

Moreover, our contribute page says "the GCC maintainer that is taking  
care of your contributions" and there is no documentation to  
maintainers, so that part at least is wrong: maintainers don't know  
what to do. Or else, I just didn't receive the maintainer welcome  
package including the appropriate documentation :)

More fundamentaly, I think it's a strange pattern when an open-source  
project makes the path harder for our contributors. How long before  
people get sued for breaking bootstrap? :)

> We originally had those forms up on gcc.gnu.org and had to remove
> them upon explicit request from RMS.  (And, yes, I am aware that we
> also have the form in the mailing list archives, but I hope editing
> those is something we can steer clear off.)


I'd point out that other GNU (or not) projects have the same form on  
their website, e.g. http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/GNU+copyright 
+assignment+request+form or http://www.g95.org/contrib.html, in  
addition to many mailing-list archives.

FX

--
François-Xavier Coudert
http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~uccafco/