[Cabal] Copyright assignment

[Luke Schierer]

On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 01:54:42PM -0500, Ethan Blanton wrote:
> Sean Egan spake unto us the following wisdom:
> > I'll definitely be asking the lawyers more about this, but I wanted to
> > gauge your opinions first. Is requiring copyright assignment something
> > you guys are in favor for? Dead against? Somewhere in the middle?
> 
> Since I hadn't replied to this yet ... I'm somewhere in the middle, on
> this.  I think requiring it will cause us to lose contributors and
> present a complication, but I think allowing it isn't a terrible idea
> -- for example, I would be willing to sign my copyright over to IMF,
> under the agreement that IMF would not relicense my code to a non-free
> (insert licensing argument over what is free) license.
> 
> So, if there's any value in that sort of optional assignment (I don't
> know), I'm all for it.  Otherwise, I'm not convinced.  I'm not dead
> set against, either.
> 
> Ethan

There is some value in it yes.  Some will do it, particularly if we were
ever to make the fact of AOL's harrassment public.  The more of the code
that IMF controls (Speaking of which, we have a really poor acronymn,
who wants to be associated with the International Monetary Fund‽), the
stronger the possition it is in when it attempts to protect gaim's code
from the various people Sean's had to send letters to telling them to
stop using our code without releasing it.

luke