Re: [tdf-discuss] Copyright Assignments & the Document Foundation

Hi Roberto,

On Sat, 2010-11-06 at 14:27 +0100, Roberto Resoli wrote:
> The crucial point is not JCA/CLA ecc. but what we expect from the Foundation
> and what we want the governance of the Foundation should be in the future.

        Well, these are interesting topics of course; but somehow they have
been intertwined in people's minds.

> It's not a black box, we can form it in the way we want, but it should have a
> motivation for existing,other than being a mere repository of code. I
> don't feel the need for a foundation that does nothing really useful.

        I agree having a useful foundation is better than a non-useful one :-)
I'm convinced though that usefulness is an orthogonal problem to the
need (or otherwise) for copyright ownership.

> It's not warm, it's not cosy, but in my opinion could be more useful.
> It could represent me in a much more effective way. A legal entity can receive
> money, can hire lawyers, can conduct  marketing campaigns, ....

        A foundation that owns no code can represent you, inasmuch as it
commands your trust and loyalty. Similarly there is no need to own
anything in order to receive money, hire lawyers, conduct marketing
campaigns: all of which can be good things of course.

> I think LibO is too important to let things going in a random way.
> Random meaning that possibly some big contributors will dominate
> the project, being the only having the adequate "contribution power"

        The choice to not aggregate ownership is a deliberate one, and is by no
means a random choice, it follows the most outstandingly successful Free
Software projects of our time.

> As I told other times, giving power to FSF or Mozilla instead of let
> TDF taking it, is not the best thing to do.

        Nonsense; the 'TDF' still has the power to re-license the code all it
likes - vested in the consent of its members. The fact that we also
trust the FSF and the Mozilla guys to do the right thing in future is
purely an added bonus.

        Of course - that power is vested in the people that really wrote the
code, documentation, translation etc. which is IMHO where it belongs.

        ATB,

                Michael.

-- 
 michael.meeks@novell.com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot


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