Re: HP gdb/wdb sources available

[James E Wilson <wilson at specifix dot com>]

On Mon, 2005-08-29 at 13:30, Steve Ellcey wrote:
> The purpose of this delivery is to assign the copyright of any HP
> generated changes in these files to FSF so that non-HP folks can take
> any of the changes that HP made and incorporate them into the FSF gdb
> sources without worrying about HP copyright ownership.  I have a
> copyright assignment on file with FSF.

This doesn't seem to make much sense.

Simply placing the files on an FSF machine does not constitute a
copyright assignment.  A copyright assignment requires a piece of paper
with appropriate language approved by the FSF and signed by a VP or
higher at HP that covers the code in question.  (And by the way, this
isn't an FSF machine, so by placing something here, you haven't actually
given it to the FSF.)

Also, your copyright assignment only covers code that you wrote
yourself.  If you give code to the FSF, that does not cause the code to
be covered by your copyright assignment.  We need a copyright assignment
from the original author of the code.  If HP has a corporate assignment,
then that would be sufficient.  Otherwise, we need personal assignments
from everyone that helped write the code, along with corporate
disclaimers for each person.  If you haven't been keeping records of who
wrote which piece of code (such as FSF style ChangeLog entries), then
only a corporate assignment will do.
-- 
Jim Wilson, GNU Tools Support, http://www.specifix.com