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FSFE Releases Fiduciary License Agreement

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the who-owns-me dept.

lisah writes "FSF Europe announced this week that it has released its Fiduciary License Agreement (FLA), which is being touted as an 'assignment of copyright.' The goal of the FLA is to allow free software projects to place their copyright under the control of a single group or trustee, though its usefulness is being debated throughout the open source community since it only address the authorship rights of a project, not the more intangible moral rights. Furthermore, the agreement seems to have been created without the involvement of a lot of lawyers and some members of the community worry that the FLA might have unintended consequences if adopted without sound legal advice." Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

5 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. Hide the children by Lord_Slepnir · · Score: 5, Funny

    The words "Free Software" and "Patent" were used in the same sentence. The loud screaming sound you hear the Richard Stallman going berserk. Don't worry, it happens every so often. Just stay out of the area in a direct line between Berkley and Redmond, and Berkley and Europe, and you should be safe.

  2. Re:who knew by bshellenberg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you are drafting a legal document, it would be wise to involve a lawyer much in the same way that brain surgery should involve a doctor.

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  3. Re:What? by Lord_Slepnir · · Score: 4, Funny
    It means "possessing properties that make it Fiducious".

    I hope that helps

  4. Re:always been leery of assigning... by killjoe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Here is the problem. When you wrote that code you violated somebodies patent. It doesn't matter what you wrote if you added two number together or concatenated a string you violated a patent.

    So now you are a target for a lawsuit, what are you going to do about it?

    Sometimes it makes sense to turn over your copyright to another agency. Sometimes the agencies insist on it (see mysql). In the end it's your choice of course but don't think people do it because they are stupid.

    Anyway this most likely applies to patches, bug fixes, etc. I certainly have no delusions of grandeur such that I will want to keep ownership of a dozen lines of code patching some hole or whatnot. Who the hell cares.

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  5. The headline is wrong. FSF != FSFE by Schraegstrichpunkt · · Score: 3, Informative

    This article is about FSFE, which is independent of the FSF.

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