Re: suspending FSF contributor agreements with immediate effect

[Nathan Sidwell]

On 1/14/20 7:37 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
> On 15/01/2020 01:19, Joel Sherrill wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 5:48 PM Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro
> > <mailto:daniel@pocock.pro>> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >      On 15/01/2020 00:42, Joel Sherrill wrote:
> >      > This will create a lot of paperwork which puts GNU project
> >      maintainers in a
> >      > very bad position. In practice, ....
> >      this is the sad reality of an organization where volunteers have not
> >      been registered as equal members with equal votes in the corporate
> >      entity, FSF, Inc
> >
> >
> > You are missing the point entirely. This is not about representation or
> > voting,
> > this is about the burden of daily activities.
>
>
> I agree those issues are important and burdensome for the project
> maintainers.
>
> Nonetheless, contributors have a right to decide who owns the
> intellectual property.

*contributors* have already made that decision -- they filed the 
paperwork and *continue to* contribute.  It would be irresponsible for 
someone with an assignment, to revoke that assignment /and/ continue 
contributing patches.

You could decide you no longer wished to contribute to an FSF project, 
and no longer submit patches to it (in addition to any explicit 
public/private message you might send).

AFAICT there is no example of adding a revocation to the copyright.list 
file.  I never noticed one.  I noticed that my individual assignment, 
including an employer assignment, never had a note later when I changed 
employers and ended up covered by the employer's blanket assignment. 
The closest it gets are assignments that are explicitly time-limited 
from the get go -- they have a termination date when assigned.

Now, that's not to suggest your idea is inherently bad.  The thought had 
occurred to me too -- stop contributing.  But I decided things would 
have to be really dire to do that.

nathan

--
Nathan Sidwell