GNOME Copyright Assignment Policy

Created
Fri, 13/08/2010 - 22:10
Updated
Fri, 13/08/2010 - 22:10

Vincent Untz announced and blogged today about the GNOME Copyright Assignment Policy and a longer guidelines document about the GNOME policy. I want to thank both Vincent and Michael Meeks for their work with me on this policy.

As I noted in my blog last week, GUADEC really reminded me how great the GNOME community is. Therefore, it's with great pride that I was able to assist on this important piece of policy for the GNOME community.

There are a lot of forces in the corporate side of Free Software right now that are aggressively trying to convince copylefted projects to begin assigning copyright of their code (or otherwise agree to CLAs) to corporations without any promises that the code will remain Free Software. We must resist this pressure: copyleft, when used correctly, is the force that keeps equality in the community, as I've written about before.

I thank the GNOME Board of Directors for entrusting us to write the policy, and am glad they have adopted it.