[boost] Re: Boost License future considerations

From: Alexander Terekhov (terekhov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-08-03 04:59:42

"Aaron W. LaFramboise" wrote:
[...]
> The strategy that the FSF uses is to require a formal copyright
> assignment for all non-trivial contributions.  That puts them into a
> very good legal position, as they are able to license anything in any
> manner they like; 

Wrong. While the FSF can sell all transferred copyrights to Microsoft, 
the ASSIGNMENT AGREEMENT (contract) states that 

"The Foundation agrees that all of its distributions of the 
 Transferred Work, or of any work "based on the Transferred Work" 
 (that is any work that in whole or in part incorporates or is 
 derived from all or part of the Transferred Work), shall be under a
 version of the Foundation's General Public License,  Lesser General 
 Public License or Library General Public License (collectively 
 "LGPL")."

>                   apparently complete ownership 

FSF can sue claiming copyright infringement; former copyright 
owner is precluded from going to court against anyone. That's it. 

Don't ever assign anything to FSF (or MySQL, or whomever).

regards,
alexander.