On Mon, 2004-02-23 at 10:36 +0100, Jean-Michel POURE wrote: > > 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... If these FSF "bureaux" actually exist, there is nothing keeping citizens in any country that is a member of the WIPO from assigning joint copyright to all of the "bureaux."
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