[Vladimir Marangozov]
BTW, I'm surprised by the fact that in an Open Source world I'm asked to sign a licence agreement with CNRI or to send e-mails for contributed code.
[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]
You shouldn't be; the FSF certainly requires a signed copyright assignment from contributors. I had to sign one for a bunch of patches I made to oleo many years ago. It was a minor nuissance, but that's all.
Except they add up: year after year, a new batch of stupid little requirements piles up on top of the last year's, and it's a ratchet effect -- always more, never less. The aggregate gets to be a real weariness on the soul. I had to laugh when François Pinard happened to post this on c.l.py today:
... Would it be any volunteer, at least for taking care of filling the FSF papers, if any are needed? I filled more than enough of those in my life, I prefer to avoid the burden.
Ask Barry how many years we've been trying to sign pymode over to the FSF <0.5 wink>. [Vlad]
If Python or Linux had had such constraints from the start, they wouldn't have been what they are today.
I sympathize, but that's really hard to say. You don't get pig-biting weary of this crap until you're my age <wink>. AFAIK, Berkeley has never beed sued over the BSD license, MIT over the X license, or the U of Arizona over the Icon license (none, really -- Icon is in the public domain). All the legal mumbo jumbo in the "modern" licenses is like wearing garlic around your neck to ward off vampires: the threat isn't real, and if it were it wouldn't do you any good anyway. a-wooden-stake-thru-the-heart-is-your-only-true-defense-ly y'rs - tim