Clarified that copyright assignment is encouraged, but not mandatory.

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Christopher Allan Webber 2011-04-30 09:26:03 -05:00
parent 776331fd96
commit 2514dc0280

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@ -244,17 +244,24 @@ everyone is the hero by Will on "Why AGPLv3 and CC0":
.. _CC0 v1: http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
Why copyright assignment?
=========================
Why (non-mandatory) copyright assignment?
=========================================
Will Kahn-Greene on "Why copyright assignment?":
Chris Webber on "Why copyright assignment?":
GNU MediaGoblin is a GNU project with the copyrights held by the
FSF. Like other GNU projects, we require copyright assignment to
the FSF which gives the FSF the legal ability to defend the
AGPL-covered status of the software and distribute it.
GNU MediaGoblin is a GNU project with non-mandatory but heavily
encouraged copyright assignment to the FSF. Most, if not all, of
the core contributors to GNU MediaGoblin will have done a
copyright assignment, but unlike some other GNU projects, it isn't
required here. We think this is the best choice for GNU
MediaGoblin: it ensures that the Free Software Foundation may
protect the software by enforcing the AGPL if the FSF sees fit,
but it also means that we can immediately merge in changes from a
new contributor. It also means that some significant non-FSF
contributors might also be able to enforce the AGPL if seen fit.
This is important to us because it guarantees that this software
we're working so hard on will be available to everyone and will
survive us. As long as someone is interested in using it and/or
working on it, it will live on.
Again, assignment is not mandatory, but it is heavily encouraged,
even incentivized: significant contributors who do a copyright
assignment to the FSF are eligible to have a unique goblin drawing
produced for them by the project's main founder, Christopher Allan
Webber. See :ref:`contributinghowto` for details.