Re: Licensing and copyright

[Jean-Michel POURE <jm poure com>]

> If the FSF went evil and took all the code people had assigned and made
> it proprietary, they would be breaking their promises in the assignment
> contract.  If the contract was voided then the ownership of the code
> would revert to the original owner, which would mean they had no right
> to change the license on the code.

Again, the GPL and the FSF have proved very efficient and are not at stake.

The following remarks were brought to your attention:

[1] In the event of a court battle, individuals and authors may have to appear 
in front of US courts, even if the FSF is defending them.

[2] In the event of the FSF going bust (after a court battle for example), the 
judge may not be bound to the FSF contracts. In certain circumstances 
(terrorism, war, the FSF going bust, etc...), a judge may be able to rewrite 
the FSF contracts and sell its assets to the most offering company.

This outlines the drawbacks of putting "all eggs into the same basket".  My 
concern is that the assigned rights may fall under the umbrella of one single 
law system. 

Large companies organize differently. For example, oil companies do not 
concentrate ownership of all assets in one single country. On the long run 
(50 years or more), it is safer to spread ownership in several countries.

I see no problem in Japanese citizen assigning rights to the FSF Japan, 
Russian citizen assigning rights to the FSF Russia, etc...

Can we agree on that?

Best regards,
Jean-Michel Pouré