Copyright Assignment is a tricky topic in the FLOSS world.

The first time copyright assignment drew my attention was in how Novell’s go-oo hypocritically uses it as FUD against Open Office, and – of course – how ignorant and/or malicious mono apologists used it as a talking point.

Today,  I read a very interesting post by Bradley M. Kuhn, “Not All Copyright Assignment is Created Equal“, where he lays out 2 points:

  • FSF promises to never make their software proprietary. Shuttleworth claims that All copyright assignment agreements empower dual licensing, and relicensing, but that is simply a false statement if you include FSF in the “All”. FSF promises to never proprietarize its versions of the software assigned to it and always release its versions of the software under Free Software licenses.
  • Non-profits have a different duty to the public. For-profit companies have one duty: to make money for their owners and/or shareholders. Non-profit organizations, by contrast, are chartered to carry out the public good. Therefore, they cannot liberally ignore what’s in the public good just because it makes some money. An organization like FSF, which has a public charter that explicitly says that it seeks to advance software freedom would fail to carry out its public mission if it engaged in proprietary relicensing.

    • Both points are good, but the second is especially powerful as it illustrates the divide between players like the FSF and any given “open source company” – and illustrates the foolishness of criticising the FSF as if it were a for-profit company.