From: Collin Funk Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2025 21:29:39 GMT Subject: Re: Signed-off-by & the law Message-ID: <87tszylem4.fsf@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: "D. Ben Knoble" writes: > On Thu, Oct 16, 2025 at 4:55 PM Collin Funk wrote: >> >> "D. Ben Knoble" writes: >> >> > Any contributors/users with an interest in law feel like taking a stab >> > at answering "Is Git's signed-off-by legally useful" ? >> > https://law.stackexchange.com/q/111158/26698 >> > >> > Having a solid reference answer is usually a good thing, if one exists. >> >> Not sure if it has ever been a topic in court, but it would allow you to >> argue that committers signed off to the DCO acknowledging that they have >> the ability to contribute the work under an open source license [1]. In >> other words, the they have confirmed the work is not owned by their >> employers, as is often the case with Software Developers in the US [2]. > > As Junio points out, this is dependent on the project attaching a DCO > meaning to the sign-off. Yes, I should have mentioned that, thanks. The DCO meaning is what I see 99% of the time, so my writing assumed it. >> That is why I prefer copyright assignments. I have done many various GNU >> projects that I commit to. I feel, at least in GNU's case, that they >> force you to consider whether an employer may own your work [3]. If so, >> the FSF will request your employer sign your copyright assignment. >> >> Obviously, the assignment process is time consuming and a barrier to >> entry for new contributors. For that reason some GNU projects, such as >> glibc and binutils, allow you to send patches with "Signed-off-by" to >> the DCO if you do not have a copyright assignment nowadays [4]. > > Less germane to the original question: I'm less familiar with > copyright assignment, but it seems relatively heavyweight here. It > seems ironic to me that GNU would want me to give up my own rights > when contributing to their project ;) I think this section from an article written by the FSF addresses your concern [1]: Some developers worry that assigning copyright will strip them of all their rights to the code they've created. To address this, the FSF includes a "license grantback" to the developer in the agreement contract. For the developer, a license grantback means they can continue to modify and share their code, and technically, they could even distribute their software under a different license. In other words, by assigning copyright to the FSF, the developer does not give up any of these sorts of rights. All of my assignments have a grantback clause. So you could use changes/improvements you make to a program elsewhere under a different license. Collin [1] https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2022/fall/copyright-assignment-with-the-fsf