Re: Why not contribute? (to GCC)

[Paolo Bonzini <bonzini@gnu.org>]

On 04/26/2010 07:20 AM, Richard Kenner wrote:
>> [1] France in my case, probably Europe in general.  What you do in
>> your free time is yours by default, land grab clauses are not
>> accepted, and it's only when you work at home on things you also
>> do at work that questions can be asked.
>
> That's true in the US as well, but the sticky part is when you try to
> define such nebulous things as "free time", "company equipment", and
> "things you also do at work".  If you're not doing programming at
> work, you don't need a disclaimer.  And if you are, then how broadly
> "things" are defined becomes potentially relevant.

I would not be surprised if these things were better defined in
Europe. I would not be surprised if they weren't better defined either,
but it's worth trying because in my experience the disclaimer is a much
higher barrier-to-entry than the assignment.

In particular, it is not common to find lawyers that are fluent in US
law in European institutions (if they are fluent in English at all).  In
fact, the FSF would do this half of the world a great favor by making a
list of countries where a disclaimer from the employer is not needed (if
any).  Alternatively, ask the FSF Europe to work on a version in at
least French, German, Italian and Spanish.

And even in the US we lost a patch for 4.5 due to a problem with the
disclaimer.  I read this recently on gcc-patches:

    The FSF has a personal copyright assignment for me, but I could not
    get one from my employer at the time, Stanford (according to
    Stanford's policies they would not claim copyright on this patch).

I suppose that this referred to http://rph.stanford.edu/5-2.html which
shows that the matter is not black-and-white:

    BOOKS, ARTICLES, AND SIMILAR WORKS, INCLUDING UNPATENTABLE SOFTWARE
    In accord with academic tradition, except to the extent set forth in
    this policy, Stanford does not claim ownership to pedagogical,
    scholarly, or artistic works, regardless of their form of
    expression. Such works include those of students created in the
    course of their education, such as dissertations, papers and
    articles. The University claims no ownership of popular nonfiction,
    novels, textbooks, poems, musical compositions, unpatentable
    software, or other works of artistic imagination which are not
    institutional works and did not make significant use of University
    resources or the services of University non-faculty employees
    working within the scope of their employment.

Yet copyright.list has:
- 3 disclaimers from Stanford dating back to 1989
- 10 contributors with a Stanford email, all without a disclaimer

So?

Paolo