From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Carlo Wood To: Gerald Pfeifer Cc: Joe Buck , Diego Novillo , gcc@gcc.gnu.org, POP Sebastian Subject: Re: Copyright forms for new contributor? Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 17:42:00 -0000 Message-id: <20011018024250.A8677@alinoe.com> References: <200110161945.MAA06074@atrus.synopsys.com> X-SW-Source: 2001-10/msg01001.html On Wed, Oct 17, 2001 at 09:21:01PM +0200, Gerald Pfeifer wrote: > On Tue, 16 Oct 2001, Joe Buck wrote: > >> Nobody officially handles these requests ever since RMS requested that we > >> remove these forms from our web site. And ever since then, I am wasting my > >> time handling these requests as nobody else seems to care. > > The reason for not giving out the forms directly was that people were > > sending the wrong forms, making small (but legally significant) changes > > to them, etc. Since the contract has to be on paper, it works best if > > the FSF sends out the actual paper [...] > > This definitely makes sense, and I didn't mean to criticize that. However, > it was (and is) absolutely unclear to me, why we cannot publish the forms > used for requesting the paperwork on the web. > > > Just the same, we need a better procedure. Perhaps we SC members will > > need to take turns being the copyright form liason. We could set up > > a mailing list for the purpose of handling requests from contributors > > for the legal documents. > > Either that, or one or two volunteers. > > The problem right now is that requests basically remain unanswered, and > I've just been jumping in when I notice that. My analysis of this thread is: The main issue here is that the FSF clerk should be able to automate his work as much as possible. He probably also doesn't want to spend lots of time with explaining to people which papers they need. In order to remove the need for the clerk to re-read every signed document he gets, he wants to print the document himself, sign it, send it to the developer and receive the document back with both signatures: in that case his own signature tells him the document is original and does not need re-reading. In order to remove the need for him to explain to people which papers they need - he asks volunteers per project to communicate with the developers and pass to him a clear request for sending a signed paper to the developer. The latter could be automated via a webpage for the gcc project imho. -- Carlo Wood