2010/11/7 Michael Meeks <[email protected]>: > Hi Roberto, Hi Michael,
> On Sat, 2010-11-06 at 14:27 +0100, Roberto Resoli wrote: >> The crucial point is not JCA/CLA ecc. but what we expect from the Foundation >> and what we want the governance of the Foundation should be in the future. > > Well, these are interesting topics of course; but somehow they have > been intertwined in people's minds. > >> It's not a black box, we can form it in the way we want, but it should have a >> motivation for existing,other than being a mere repository of code. I >> don't feel the need for a foundation that does nothing really useful. > > I agree having a useful foundation is better than a non-useful one :-) > I'm convinced though that usefulness is an orthogonal problem to the > need (or otherwise) for copyright ownership. I agree that copyright ownership is not a necessary condition to have an useful foundation, but in my opinion these are not orthogonal items at all; the foundation can be much more effective in its action, because owning copyright permits much more effective action. For example: if someone steals me the code I contributed, it would be very difficult to excercise my rights, particularly if the stealing subject is a big Company; the situation is even much more difficult if the copyright is dispersed. In "why assign" page form fsf[1] I read: "... And despite the broad right of distribution conveyed by the GPL, enforcement of copyright is generally not possible for distributors: only the copyright holder or someone having assignment of the copyright can enforce the license . If there are multiple authors of a copyrighted work, successful enforcement depends on having the cooperation of all authors. " >> It's not warm, it's not cosy, but in my opinion could be more useful. >> It could represent me in a much more effective way. A legal entity can >> receive >> money, can hire lawyers, can conduct marketing campaigns, .... > > A foundation that owns no code can represent you, inasmuch as it > commands your trust and loyalty. Similarly there is no need to own > anything in order to receive money, hire lawyers, conduct marketing > campaigns: all of which can be good things of course. What I said about "being an useful foundation" i referred to the fact that, after a month, TDF still doesn't have a legal status, and I don't see any notice of an action in this direction (please point me to related information if I'm wrong). Without a legal status, i think TDF cannot do almost anything effective, including receiving donations and possibly talking to governement entities. This is also a prerequisite for eventually (even as an option, as someone is suggesting here) receive Copyright Assignments. >> I think LibO is too important to let things going in a random way. >> Random meaning that possibly some big contributors will dominate >> the project, being the only having the adequate "contribution power" > > The choice to not aggregate ownership is a deliberate one, and is by no > means a random choice, it follows the most outstandingly successful Free > Software projects of our time. I understand that this is a deliberate action of course, and please, don't think that I want coinvince you or any other that my thoughts about CA are better; my intention is only to present some aspects that may have been shadowed by the need to attract contributions. >> As I told other times, giving power to FSF or Mozilla instead of let >> TDF taking it, is not the best thing to do. > > Nonsense; the 'TDF' still has the power to re-license the code all it > likes - vested in the consent of its members. Mmm; my worries are very practical; as I said, Mozilla relicencing took 4 years and a half; what time would take to relicense about ten times that code? > The fact that we also > trust the FSF and the Mozilla guys to do the right thing in future is > purely an added bonus. Yes, I meant only that others (i trust them too, but this is not the point) and not the foundation we are establishing *now*, will have that power. It sounds a bit strange to me. > Of course - that power is vested in the people that really wrote the > code, documentation, translation etc. which is IMHO where it belongs. The power is there in any case, but dispersed and not enforceable, without a strong (copyright owning) Foundation. My last words about this, I definitely like more coding that talking about that. Long live to LibO! (under a strong TDF, I hope) bye, rob > ATB, > > Michael. [1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html -- Unsubscribe instructions: Email to [email protected] Posting guidelines: http://netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html Archive: http://www.documentfoundation.org/lists/discuss/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived ***
