Kernel contributions from organisations and individual privacy

From: greg@kroah.com (Greg KH)
To: kernelnewbies@lists.kernelnewbies.org
Subject: Kernel contributions from organisations and individual privacy
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2015 10:54:36 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20150611175436.GE22639@kroah.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <5579B9D3.9030208@mrbrklyn.com>

On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 12:39:47PM -0400, Ruben Safir wrote:
> On 06/11/2015 11:38 AM, Greg KH wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 10:41:57AM -0400, Ruben Safir wrote:
> >> On 06/11/2015 10:28 AM, Greg KH wrote:
> >>>> If the copyright is owned by the company then ONLY the company can push
> >>>>> it up stream and assign copyright to the Linux Foundation.
> >>> No one assigns kernel copyright to the Linux Foundation unless you have
> >>> entered into some odd business agreement with that legal entity.  And
> >>> that is quite rare to do so and takes lots of lawyers and time.
> >>
> >>
> >> It doesn't take a lot of lawyers anymore than a license would.  I
> >> thought that the Foundation requests this routinely in order so that it
> >> has standing in court if a lawsuit should happen.
> > 
> > No, it never has done this, where are you getting this crazy idea?
> 
> 
> This idea is not crazy.  During the SCO battle this problem got tossed
> about quite a bit and I thought that at that time the Linux Foundation
> and Mad Dog set up a Copyright Clearing House for the Kernel.  Your
> saying that this never happened, so maybe I'm wrong.

You are wrong.

Also, the Linux Foundation didn't even exist at the time of the start of
the SCO "issues", so I don't know who you were talking to.

> The problem is two fold.  First the Foundation and Linus need standing
> in court cases where violations of the GPL2 were involved...if there was
> such need.  That is best established with assignment of the copyright,
> bit done through a contributor license agreement.

That is not true at all, and is not a best practice that I would
encourage any project to take.  In fact, I don't contribute to any such
project, and strongly recommend that no one else would do so either.

> I never claimed, BTW, that this was forced on everyone.  But I thought
> it was encouraged since the SCO battle.

Nope, again, didn't happen, isn't an issue, you own your own copyright
of any code you contribute to the kernel, end of story.

thanks,

greg k-h