Is the intent to drop Copyright Assignment for Emacs still going?

Not too long ago after GCC dropped its copyright paperwork requirement, I heard that the Emacs maintainers were going to do the same (forgot the source, forgive me). Are they preparing for that? I believe that dropping it will result in a far more number of potential people and human work for Emacs' development. Personally, although I have already signed it as student, I'm not so sure in the future when being employed cause there's a term: contact us when you change your employer. Side note: I signed it to propose `apply-right-partially`, the function was rejected in favor of explicit lambdas. A bit sad at first, then I realized its usage may lead to breakages later: what about when the applied FUN's parameters have optional arguments added to the right? I still hope for Clojure-like's short sweet anonymous function, or at least Scheme's `cut`.

Are you sure that's what you heard and not just you misremembering a thread?

Maybe that's it, my memory fooled me. There was a discussion on the mailing before GCC did [the\_better\_option\_is\_to\_stop\_requiring\_copyright](https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/gf8rmc/the_better_option_is_to_stop_requiring_copyright/).

No comments of value to make on the copyright part of the question, but regarding the side note can't you just submit it as part of a library to ELPA since you have already signed the copyright agreement?

I don't think a single function/macro is worthy as a package. The Clojure-like short lambda requires modifying the C core reader, its proposals sent by a number of authors were rejected already. But sending a patch for `cut` looks promising, maybe I'll try that later.

Yeah I didn't take a look at the Clojure one, I just went right with looking up the Scheme one and seeing that it could be relatively easily implemented. It's unfortunate that Emacs Lisp lacks reader macros.

To my knowledge, there has never been an intent to drop copyright assignment for Emacs. People ask for it a bunch, but as those requests are (in my experience) never accompanied by any alternative solution for the actual *purpose* of copyright assignment, it's always a non-starter. If anyone was to propose a workable alternative with an actual legal basis (as opposed to the wishful thinking that I usually see), I'm sure the FSF would at least consider it.

If I remember correctly from a few of those discussions that I followed, the actual question was whether there is a purpose for the copyright assignment. Did the FSF ever go to court to protect the code of Emacs, and if it did, in the absence of copyright transfers, would there have been a challenge on that grounds? After all, a lot of other free software organizations do not require copyright transfers from contributors. Are they running blindfolded, or is the FSF being overly careful? The same discussion happens with a lot of other things that are recommended by the FSF lawyers, including the infamous startup disclaimer *"this software might explode and it's not our fault"* (paraphrased). Interesting read regarding alternative possibilities (which the FSF is open to): [https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/FSF-copyright-handling](https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/FSF-copyright-handling)