Re: How is FSF (not) going

[Jonathan Larmour <jifl at jifvik dot org>]

Andrew Lunn wrote:
> Hi Jifl
>
> What is the status of FSF? 

My bad. I hadn't pinged them in a while. I believe we are nearly in a 
position to do all the assignments from all copyright holders, with the 
exception of eCosCentric (which holds all the copyright for recent 
contributors of course).

I raised some issues with the FSF about that but hadn't had a response (one 
issue being that the existing FSF assignment form text is aimed at 
individuals, not companies; the second that the assign.future text does not 
seem to permit non-assignment of stuff that isn't intended to be 
contributed immediately).

But I guess there's nothing to stop individual maintainers going ahead now 
if they wish, and so I'm attaching the questionnaire the FSF require. The 
last question is the most interesting. There it is looking for a simple 
list of all changed files (or for ex-RH people, changed since you left Red 
Hat). This is not just files you have added (C) and your name on, but all 
files where you have added material affecting the copyright, whether 
explicitly asserted or not.

The FSF have indicated that this list just has to be a best effort guess. 
The changes are still covered by assigning "past and future" changes, but 
they would prefer the full list.

I have found cvs allows you to get log entries for certain users in a date 
range:

e.g.
cvs -q log -d '2002-07-01<2005-01-16' -wjlarmour -S -N

( do "cvs log --help" for other options)

There's only so much that can be done by CVS however. This obviously cannot 
handle the case where something is being checked in on behalf of somebody 
else, primarily a contribution. For the more diligent maintainers, this 
could be quite a lot of files. All I can suggest is to do your best in 
getting a good list.

Mark Salter may want to contact RH legal about Red Hat's assignment status 
for work by their own employees. They have a blanket assignment to the FSF, 
but I suspect it doesn't cover eCos. That would need to be added. Or it may 
be sufficient to arrange on an individual basis if you are the only 
individual supplying changes.

I'll ping the FSF about eCosCentric assignment again.

Jifl

FSF assignment questionnaire:
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Please email the following information to fsf-records@gnu.org, and we
will send you the assignment form for your past and future changes.
Please use your full name as the subject line of the message.


[What is the name of the program or package you're contributing to?]


[Did you copy any files or text written by someone else in these changes?
Even if that material is free software, we need to know about it.]


[Do you have an employer who might have a basis to claim to own
your changes?  Do you attend a school which might make such a claim?]


[For the copyright registration, what country are you a citizen of?]


[What year were you born?]


[Please write your email address here.]


[Please write your snail address here.]





[Which files have you changed so far, and which new files have you written
so far?]



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--
--["No sense being pessimistic, it wouldn't work anyway"]-- Opinions==mine