volunteer copyright assignment / licensing agreement

[Bdale Garbee]

Stefano Zacchiroli <leader at debian.org> writes:

> As it has been requested by Debian contributors, I'd like to know if SPI
> offers the possibility, to contributors of affiliated projects, to
> transfer copyright (or specific rights) to SPI. If yes: how?

The answer should be yes, but I don't recall any specific incidents in
which SPI formally accepted transfer of copyright from an individual.
As a result, I think we would need to speak to our SFLC friends about
exactly what form such a contribution agreement should take and what
record keeping we need to engage in.

Frankly, I've never been a fan of copyright assignment.  While I'm sure
there are cases in which it makes sense for someone to want to assign
their copyrights to SPI, I would want to have a per-incident discussion
with the individual(s) in question before we blindly start accepting
such assignments, to be sure the best interests of the Free Software
community are actually being served by such assignment.

Bdale
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