Re: Loading a package applies automatically to future sessions?

[Sam Steingold]

> * George Plymale II <address@hidden> [2018-02-01 18:02:12 -0500]:
>
> Well, my understanding of the policy was that one's _contributions_
> are owned by the FSF. I.e., that you have to sign waivers which tell
> the FSF, "Hey, I give up all rights to own any code that I give you
> guys in these certain projects." To me, that seems hypocritical and it
> seemed that indeed the actual FSF policy versus what the FSF itself
> expounds were in disagreement. But, maybe I'm incorrect about that if
> that above passage is really what it sounds like.

This is a very common misunderstanding.

You _can_ distribute GNU software with your own changes under the GNU
GPL - this is called "forking", and has been done many times. The most
notable example is Lucid/X Emacs.

However, if you want the FSF to accept your changes into their source
code repository, you will have to assign them the copyright so that you
(or your heirs) will not be able to sabotage the FSF software
development by revoking your license to use your changes. This also
happened before (Gosling Emacs), and the FSF is now understandably
paranoid.

So, to repeat: you _can_ distribute your changes yourself.
If you want _the FSF_ to do that, you have to sign the papers.

HTH.

-- 
Sam Steingold (http://sds.podval.org/) on darwin Ns 10.3.1561
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