Working on branches while copyright paperwork being processed?

[law@redhat.com]

In message <1045048507.756.35.camel@steven>, Steven Bosscher writes:
 >Op wo 12-02-2003, om 05:38 schreef law@redhat.com:
 >> In message <20030211185700.GA6033@tornado.toronto.redhat.com>, Diego Novill
 >o wr
 >> ites:
 >>  >[ From a discussion in gomp-discuss ]
 >>  >
 >>  >On Tue, 11 Feb 2003, Steven Bosscher wrote:
 >>  >
 >>  >> Diego, is it allowed to act in the mean time as if he does have an
 >>  >> assignment?  It's on a branch, maybe it's not such a big deal as for
 >>  >> main line especially when everybody knows all the paper work is in the
 >>  >> pipeline.
 >>  >> 
 >>  >I believe that to be the case, but I'm not sure.
 >>  >
 >>  >Can anybody confirm that I'm not talking nonsense?  A couple of
 >>  >developers for the new gomp-branch are in the process of filing
 >>  >their FSF copyright forms.
 >>  >
 >>  >Could they still contribute patches to the branch while the
 >>  >paperwork is being processed?
 >> I *strongly* recommend against this.  In fact, please please please
 >> don't do it.  Code without proper assignments should never get into
 >> our source base, even on a branch.
 >
 >I understand why you feel about it this way.  But in this case maybe an
 >exception could be made, for the following reasons.
No.  Not even in this case.


 >It would help if there was some way to speed up this copyright
 >assignment process.  For g95, we would send our copyright assignments to
 >the project maintainer, so he could accept our contributions and forward
 >the paper work.  Maybe such a solution should be considered for GCC as
 >well, i.e. an SC member would collect copyright assignments and forward
 >them to the FSF?  Or is there more to it than just putting a date, name
 >and signature at the bottom of those forms?
I used to do this kind of stuff, but when RMS stopped cooperating, I
stopped spending my time dealing with copyright paperwork.  If you're
unhappy with the state of how the FSF handles copyrights, then take it
up with RMS and the FSF.

jeff