Manual contributions and copyright assignments

[Nathanael Nerode]

Gerald wrote:
>RMS asked us to implement the following policy:
>
>  [P]lease don't install changes in the manual on the strength
>  of copyright assignments signed before Jan 2002.  If a person 
>signed
>  before that, assign@gnu.org can look at the papers and tell you 
>if
>  they explicitly cover documentation.  If not, we should get new 
>papers
>  from that contributor.
>
>As far as I understand, obvious fixes and minor changes (where we 
>didn't
>need a copyright assignment before) are not affected.

Let me state for the record that I consider all my changes to the manual 
to date to be uncopyrightable.  So at least you don't have to worry 
about me for the past.

>RMS, how do you suggest to proceed practically?  This seems to 
>affect more
>than 100 developers with CVS write access, any of which can commit 
>patches
>of her/his own or others, and about 700 contributors overall 
>(according to
>/gd/gnuorg/copyright.list).

For the *future* there's no real problem; there's just a major 
annoyance. Someone has to check the paperwork status of everyone in
MAINTAINERS w.r.t. documentation, and ask each of the no-documentation
pre-2002 people if they wish to sign a new documenation assignment.  
For those who don't, they're marked as 'no-documentation' in MAINTAINERS
and notified. :-/  For those who do, their documentation changes can't be
committed until their paperwork is complete.

For the *past*, however, there's a serious problem; people may have 
checked in documentation changes under the assumption that they were 
paperwork-complete, and those people may no longer be maintainers, may 
not want to sign new paperwork, or whatever.  But their changes may not 
be trivial, or indeed practically removable at all (if other people 
have built on them).  If we are not to install their changes (which are 
already in CVS) what are we supposed to do?

--Nathanael