Update to GCC copyright assignment policy

The GCC Steering Committee has decided to relax the requirement to assign copyright to the Free Software Foundation. "Contributors who have an FSF Copyright Assignment don't need to change anything. Contributors who wish to utilize the Developer Certificate of Origin should add a Signed-off-by message to their commit messages. Developers with commit access may add their name to the DCO list in the MAINTAINERS file to certify the DCO for all future commits in lieu of individual Signed-off-by messages for each commit."

GCC To No Longer Require Copyright Assignment To The Free Software Foundation

In addition to the GCC 9.4 release today, the GCC Steering Committee announced today that they are dropping their long-running policy of requiring copyright assignment to the Free Software Foundation for all code contributions.

GCC has long required copyright assignment to the FSF for any patches and that's bee an issue for some. Especially these days with the FSF coming under fire and even some talking of possible forks to the GNU Compiler Collection or being able to move this open-source compiler further away from the FSF, the steering committee decided to no longer require the controversial copyright assignment.

FSF Drops Assignment Requirement for GCC

The Free Software Foundation announced on June 1, 2021 that it would no longer require and assignment of rights from contributors to GCC (GNU C Compiler) project. Instead, it will require a DCO (Developer Certificate of Origin), following the practice lead by the Linux Foundation for the kernel.

This move brings the GCC project into line with community practice, and it’s a welcome development. Over the years, various contributors had refused to agree to the FSF’s contribution assignment agreement, a document that is unusual in both substance and form. As to substance, while assignments for contributions were more common a couple of decades ago, today they are quite rare; most open source projects today either use license in=out (with or without a DCO), or a CLA with a non-exclusive license grant. As to form, the FSF’s assignment contains some truly unique language about patents* that patent licensing lawyers find perplexing, causing companies to balk at making contributions to FSF projects simply because they can’t parse the terms.

Given the widespread rejection by open source communities of CLAs, the FSF’s outlier stance on its contribution terms over the years has been surprising. Its premise that “Our ability to enforce the license on packages like GCC or GNU Emacs begins with a copyright assignment” was never exactly correct. It’s the kind of statement that looks good on paper, but doesn’t make so much sense in practice. It is true that only a copyright owner or exclusive licensee can enforce a copyright. See HyperQuest, Inc. v. N’Site Sols., Inc., 632 F.3d 377, 382 (7th Cir. 2011). But that’s because a court does not want to be asked by a plaintiff to enforce a copyright, when other parties, who are not before the court, have the right to grant licenses to the defendant and inoculate the defendant from the claim.

GCC Drops Requirement of Copyright Assignment to FSF

I am not, and SFLC is not, counsel to FSF, the GNU Project, or the GCC Steering Committee. We do not speak for any of them. I have read the GCC Steering Committee statement on copyright assignment, and on that basis I can give an independent legal opinion.

[...]

The GCC Steering Committee has decided, on the “inbound” side of its projects, not to require copyright assignment to FSF for contributions. Copyright assignment to FSF was traditionally required for “core” GNU Project components. Instead, the Steering Committee has decided to allow contributors to keep their own copyrights, if they wish. Such contributors can submit a Developer Certificate of Origin, stating that the contribution is their own work, or the work of others who have given them authority to certify origin, and that they have the necessary rights to make the contribution. This is the mechanism by which the Linux kernel project, among other non-FSF managers of GPL’d code, accept contributions to their works.

The GCC Steering Committee takes a step away from the Free Software Foundation

When the Free Software Foundation (FSF) recently returned its disgraced founder Richard M. Stallman (RMS) to its board, the FSF board hadn't reckoned with how others would see his return. Even the GCC Steering Committee, which oversaw the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) free software's primary collection of programming language tools, removed Stallman, the original GCC creator, from its membership. Now, the GCC Steering Committee has relaxed its decades-old requirement that new and modified GCC code should have its copyright assigned to the FSF.

Update to GCC copyright assignment policy

The GCC Steering Committee has decided to relax the requirement to assign copyright for all changes to the Free Software Foundation. GCC will continue to be developed, distributed, and licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0. GCC will now accept contributions with or without an FSF copyright assignment. This change is consistent with the practices of many other major Free Software projects, such as the Linux kernel.

Code contributions to GCC no longer have to be assigned to FSF, says compiler body

GCC is widely used, not least as the primary compiler toolchain for Linux. Although contributing code under the GPL 3.0 license is sufficient for it to be open source, assigning copyright gives more flexibility to the owners for such things as publishing the code under a different license – anything that would otherwise require asking the original contributors (who may no longer be available for any number of reasons) for further permission.

The reason for the change is not stated, but there was a long thread in April on the matter of GCC's association with the FSF.

The FSF has been entangled in controversy since restoring its founder Richard Stallman to the board.

Red Hat pulled funding for the FSF; the Debian community is divided on the subject.

GCC Steering Committee Relaxes Copyright Requirement

Since Richard M. Stallman's return to the Free Software Foundation (FSF) board, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) Steering Committee has taken steps to distance itself from the FSF, reports Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols.

The emancipation of GCC? Compiler collection now accepts contributions without FSF copyright assignment

Developers who want to contribute to the GNU Compiler Collection but don’t feel like signing over copyright to the Free Software Foundation can get busy committing now. GCC Steering Committee member David Edelsohn informed contributors via the mailing list that the committee “decided to relax the requirement to assign copyright for all changes” to the FSF.

Speaking for the committee, he wrote that the GCC project “will now accept contributions with or without an FSF copyright assignment”, a practice thought of as consistent with that “of many other major Free Software projects, such as the Linux kernel”.

SD Times news digest: GCC updates its copyright assignment policy, Amazon DocumentDB released, and the Swan Lake beta release of Ballerina

The GCC Steering Committee updated its copyright assignment policy by relaxing the requirement to assign copyright to all changes to the Free Software Foundation (FSF).

The project will still continue to exist under the GNU General Public License v3.0 and will now accept contributions with or without an FSF copyright assignment.

The change is consistent with the policies of other major Free Software Projects. Additional details are available here.

A possible copyright-policy change for glibc

The GNU C Library developers are asking for comments on a proposal to stop requiring developers to assign their copyrights to the Free Software Foundation. This mirrors the recent change by GCC, except that the community is being consulted first. "The changes to accept patches with or without FSF copyright assignment would be effective on August 2nd, and would apply to all open branches. The glibc stewards, like the GCC SC, continue to affirm the principles of Free Software, and that will never change."

Seeking input from developers: glibc copyright assignment policy.

Community,

glibc was created as part of the GNU Project but has grown to operate as
an autonomous project. As part of the GNU Toolchain the glibc stewards
support the gcc project policy changes presented here:
https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-June/236182.html

The glibc stewards are seeking input from developers to decide if the project
should relax the requirement to assign copyright for all changes to the
Free Software Foundation as follows:

Contributors who have an FSF Copyright Assignment wouldn't need to
change anything.  Contributors who wish to utilize the Developer Certificate
of Origin[1] would add a Signed-off-by message to their commit messages.

The changes to accept patches with or without FSF copyright assignment
would be effective on August 2nd, and would apply to all open branches.

The glibc stewards, like the GCC SC, continue to affirm the principles of
Free Software, and that will never change.

glibc will continue to be developed, distributed, and licensed under the
GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 or any later version as
published by the Free Software Foundation.

Input on this issue is accepted until July 1st 2021.

GNU C Library Looking To Drop FSF Copyright Assignment Policy

At the start of June, the GNU Compiler Collection decided to abandon the FSF copyright assignment requirement while now Glibc is looking to make a similar move that would go into effect at the start of August. The Glibc stewards are still seeking feedback on the matter but so far it seems the developers are overwhelmingly in favor of dropping this requirement especially as more developers try to distance themselves from the Free Software Foundation.

Open-source projects glibc and gnulib look to sever copyright ties with Free Software Foundation

The GNU C Library (glibc) and GNU Portability Library (gnulib) are laying the groundwork to divorce themselves from the troubled Free Software Foundation by removing the requirement for copyright assignment.

This move follows in the footsteps of the same shift by the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) on 2 June.

Like many projects under the GNU umbrella, glibc and gnulib – the GNU Project's C standard library and a collection of subroutines designed to ease cross-platform porting respectively – allow anyone to contribute code. Those doing so are asked to assign copyright to the Free Software Foundation – for now, at least.

GNU C Library: Change of copyright policy for glibc is under discussion

The GNU C Library copyright-assignment policy changes

Update to glibc copyright assignment policy

glibc was created as part of the GNU Project but has grown to operate
as an autonomous project.

The glibc stewards have decided to relax the requirement to assign
copyright for all changes to the Free Software Foundation. glibc will
continue to be developed, distributed, and licensed under the GNU
Lesser General Public License v2.1 or any later version as published
by the Free Software Foundation.  This change is consistent with the
practices of many other major Free Software projects, such as the
Linux kernel, and GCC [1].

Contributors who have an FSF Copyright Assignment don't need to change
anything.  Contributors who wish to utilize the Developer Certificate
of Origin[2] should add a Signed-off-by message to their commit
messages.

The changes to accept patches with or without FSF copyright assignment
will be effective after August 2nd, and will apply to all open
branches. Code shared with other GNU packages via Gnulib will continue
to require assignment to the FSF.

The glibc stewards continue to affirm the principles of Free Software,
and that will never change.

Signed,
Ryan Arnold
Paul Eggert
Jakub Jelinek
Maxim Kuvyrkov
Joseph Myers
Carlos O'Donell

[1] https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-June/236182.html
[2] https://developercertificate.org/

GNU C Library changes copyright policy for glibc contributors

The steering committee of the GNU C Library (glibc) has decided that contributors no longer have to automatically transfer their copyrights to the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The changes for glibc will take effect on August 2, 2021 and will be effective for all ongoing development branches of the Library project. From this point onwards, everyone who contributes code to the glibc project is free to decide whether they want to apply their patches with or without transferring rights to the FSF.