On 12/13/2010 07:27 PM, Thomas Klein wrote:
It's not clear to me at which point the FSF is trusting an individual
(or organization or company) and why it is mistrusting an individual per
default.
My understanding is that the FSF wants to own the code completely,*
which allows it to re-license the code, e.g. to use comments of GPL code
for generated sections in FDL-licensed documents (or some application
like that). In order to do so, the FSF needs a copyright transfer
agreement of either an individual or of a entity/company for all its
employees. If the patch is small and trivial enough to be not
copyrightable, it can be included without copyright agreement. I think
typically patches below 10 lines are regarded as obvious.
* While the FSF wants to own the code completely, you keep also the
rights on your code (except for allowing the FSF to also own the code) -
which means you can still integrate it in, e.g., closed source software
under whatever licence. In special cases, the FSF also accepts not to
own the code - but those are special cases, which need to be explicitly
discussed with the FSF.