[Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] GPL defense issues

[Greg KH]

On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 10:49:24AM -0700, Jeremy Allison wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 06:45:40PM +0200, Greg KH wrote:
> > 
> > That brings up a question, who exactly is the SFC representing here?
> > What developers have signed over copyrights to the SFC?  Was this done
> > in a "permanent" way?  "revoking" copyright assignment isn't exactly a
> > simple thing to do, last I checked, so is this really true?
> 
> Ah, this could be a big part of the misapprehensions in this
> thread !
> 
> While it is possible to sign over copyrights to the SFC, this
> is not commonly done by member projects (I think I'm safe in
> saying that). It's also not required to assign copyright in
> order for SFC to represent copyright holders in enforcement
> actions.
> 
> In Samba for example (which I can talk publicly about),
> *NO* devlopers have assigned any copyrights to the SFC,
> they are merely acting as an enforcement agent authorized
> to do so on our behalf - by the wishes of the developers.

I don't understand, what exactly do you mean by "authorized to do so on
your behalf"?  Are they your project's legal representation?  If you
haven't assigned your copyright to them to enforce, how does this all
work?

When the SFC approaches a company that seems to not be abiding by the
Samba license, who exactly do they say they are and what rights do they
have to do so?

thanks,

greg k-h