---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Donald R Robertson III via RT <[email protected]> Date: Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 2:28 PM Subject: [gnu.org #393190] Dear FSF clerk, here are all my questions about copyright assigment To: [email protected] Hello, Thanks again for your interest. The FSF does not accept assignment contracts from the wild, so we don't provide PDFs of those forms. Although it is possible to have everyone assign their work now, I believe it is our policy to not accept assignments when it isn't clear that the work is becoming a part of GNU. In general, even when it is just an individual seeking to assign work and they haven't contacted the maintainer to see about getting their work accepted, I tell them to hold-off on the assignment. Sometimes, if a contributor's work is not copyright significant, we don't need an assignment from them. Other times, life gets in the way and the person never ends up contributing. In any event, it is usually the maintainer of the project who sends someone my way looking for an assignment. If you guys haven't already signed up at https://savannah.gnu.org, then you definitely should. You should talk to them about your project (I'm sure they'd be interested in it!) and about your desire to have it included in emacs someday. Even if the work isn't ready for inclusion yet, they might see it as a promising possibility. That's really the first step and the best step you can take in getting your work assigned to the FSF. You'll have to contact them anyways at some point in the process, so you might as well get it out of the way. Thanks again for your interest, and good luck with your project.

[[email protected] - Wed Jan 28 20:18:15 2009]:

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 2:43 PM, Donald R Robertson III via RT <[email protected]> wrote: ...

...

In any event, even if all the contributors place their work in the public domain, we would still need at least a disclaimer from each of them if the project were to become a part of emacs. So I'm not sure how much time it would actually save to have them do that instead of just assigning their work when the time comes. Thanks again for your interest, and good luck with your project.

Thanks Mr. Robertson. But when the time comes:

1. What if I can no longer reach them?

2. What if they then no longer want to bother with copyright assignment?

I suspect it'd be very hard to then remove their code from Vimpulse.

Are there any other options? For example, can you contact all contributors and ask them to assign copyright now, even though it's not strictly needed yet? Or can you send me a PDF of the FSF copyright assignment contract? I could then get every contributor to sign it and fax it to me when I merge their code. Then, when the time comes, I will fax my pile of contracts to you.

When you reply to this email, please click the "Reply to All" button so that your reply will go to the whole Vimpulse mailing list will get your reply. Otherwise, I plan to forward all your future replies to the mailing list manually. If this is not ok, just let me know.

-- Sincerely, Donald R. Robertson, III, J.D. Assignment Administrator Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor Boston, MA 02110 Phone +1-617-542-5942 Fax +1-617-542-2652 -- Jason Spiro: software/web developer, packager, trainer, IT consultant. I support Linux, UNIX, Windows, and more. Contact me to discuss your needs. +1 (416) 992-3445 / www.jspiro.com