Re: Thoughts about gnuplot license and copyrights

[Hans-Bernhard B. <br...@ph...>]

Ethan A Merritt wrote:

> I conclude that you would need on the order of 25 signatures to fully
> satisfy the FSF, if that is your goal. But that specific criterion
> would only be triggered if you were attempting to transfer copyright
> to the FSF, which is rather extreme.

You would need equally many signatures regardless of what kind of legal 
body you assign the copyright to.   Whether that's the FSF, a 
to-be-founded gnuplot foundation, a single person, or something 
completely different; it doesn't change a thing.  It's mostly 
straightforward application of copyright law that dictates this. 
Copyright have to be assigned explicitly, in writing, to be upheld in
court.

Some people here seem to assume that the FSF is making their version of 
such a process needlessly complicated, and that it must surely be 
possible to do it a lot easier than that.  I doubt that.  I don't 
believe any of us can out-lawyer Prof. Eben Moglen.  Not even RMS, for 
that matter.

Which leaves us with basically two options:

* Don't wake a sleeping lion.  I.e. keep on going like we've been doing 
ever since about the days of the pre-3.6 beta source tarballs, under the 
optimistic assumption that nobody will feel an urge to actually sue us.

* Get ready to face the music.  Sign over the copyrights to some
legal body.  Either to an existing institution, or an individual or to a 
foundation to be created for the purpose.

Possible benefits of the latter approach would be that such an entity 
could properly join SF.net's project donation system to raise some 
funds, towards paying for stuff like DNS fees, registering a trademark 
and maybe getting back stolen domain names.