Rick Moen <rick@???> wrote:

> And this is because too many people are just relying on it continuing to
> be there. They really ought to stop thinking that way.

I'll admit that I haven't given too much thought to who owns what when it comes to the likes of SF - but I do frequently wonder if some of the people using it actually have other copies around. I forget the name now, but there was an instance a year or two back of a repository just "shutting up shop" and a lot of stuff was - as you say "just gone", POOF in a cloud of virtual smoke.

>> So while they still can't force Exampleco to provide sources for the
>> current or previous versions, they can prevent Exampleco from
>> "profiting" from control over it.
>
> I'm not sure I see this.

Sorry, I wasn't clear.

As you allude to later, if ExampleCo have got contributors to assign copyright to them, then they (ExampleCo) are free to change the licensing terms as they wish - delete all historical "free" stuff* and make it a closed and proprietary package. Basically taking other's work for nothing and profiting nicely from it. They can be helped in that if people blindly just keep the source on a public repository under ExampleCo's control.
On the other hand, if the individual contributors have retained their own copyright, then any one of them can go to court and (for example) seek relief of stopping any further distribution of their code until licence terms are complied with. Thus ExampleCo can't profit from having a closed system to sell without either persuading every contributor to agree, or spending the development effort of ripping out all that code and replacing with their own.

So they can still sell a closed system - but their ability to make a profit is somewhat constrained by there being a) a free version still around (hopefully*), and b) having to spend potentially large quantities of developer time stripping out all the "free" stuff they don't have the copyright for.
Or, of course, if the original code was GPL, they are somewhat constrained by having to make their own work available (assuming they are going to distribute their product) unless they've ripped out all trace of GPL code.

The main point being that they can't just take stuff for free and make a closed system with it - thus side-stepping the costs normally associated with it. At least with the GPL licence.


* Which again comes back to there being a copy of it somewhere where ExampleCo can't remove it.

I guess these days it's probably a lot harder to "un-exist" something. At least with an active project, it's likely that several contributors will have their own copies that they are working on, and all those distros with their (locally tweaked) source repos, and ...


>> And suddenly I see another musing forming from the ether ... Isn't
>> there one of the "free software advocacy groups" (for want of a better
>> description) that asks contributors to assign their copyright in stuff
>> they submit to it's projects to them ? Lets call them GoodCo ... As
>> above, if GoodCo turn bad - or are somehow co-erced....
>
> Free Software Foundation is a charitable corporation chartered under
> Commonwealth of Massachussetts law in 1985 that is required by its
> articles of incorporation and by-laws to ...


> Mr. Mark Shuttleworth of Canonical, Ltd., a limited liability
> for-profit corporation chartered in the Isle of Man for tax-avoidance
> purposes, has frequently attempted to justify his firm's requirement of
> a 'Contributor Licence Agreement' [sic] (what is in fact an assignment
> to the corporation of copyright title under a deceptive name) for all
> code contributions, by saying it's just like what FSF requests.
>
> Mais non, Monsieur Shuttleworth: FSF is tightly constrained to its
> public benefit purpose, and cannot even in bankruptcy pass along its
> assets except to a similar public benefit charitable corporation, _and_
> the world trusts Mr. Stallman and his charitable non-profit corporation
> to be, if anything, annoyingly and fanatically consistent in advancing
> free software -- in exactly the way the world has _no_ reason to trust
> Mr. Shuttleworth and his tax-dodging for-profit corporation.

Thanks for that information. It's stuff that I sort of knew about, but didn't know the details.
Once again, a wordy reply, but words of value.