In the humanities, one way into a text is through close reading. So here goes (just the first paragraph mind you because this can get tiring).
>>> I've written before about my deep skepticism regarding the true motives of Canonical, Ltd.'s advocacy and demand of for-profit corporate copyright assignment without promises to adhere to copyleft.
There is nothing wrong with Canonical requiring copyright assignment. The FSF do it, SUN did it, I would guess Microsoft does it. It is not unusual for a corporation to be a for-profit entity. There is no way someone would do unpaid work for somebody else and get nothing in return unless they were a slave or forced to do so. How would it be even possible to contribute to a Canonical project if you are not part of Canonical if the codebase is not freely accessible or at least in some way open?
>>> I've often asked Canonical employees, including Jono Bacon, Amanda Brock, Jane Silber, Mark Shuttleworth himself, and — in the comments of this very blog post — Matt Asay to explain (a) why exactly they demand copyright assignment on their projects, rather than merely having contributors agree to the GNU GPL formally (like projects such as Linux do),
That's interesting because the issue of copyright assignment arose when SCO started the whole litigation thing against Linux (well, Linux companies). Also, again, canonical is a for-profit corp, Linux is a (as you say) project so you can't compare them. I wonder what the policy of the Linux Foundation is?
>>> and (b) why, having received a contributor's copyright assignment, Canonical, Ltd. refuses to promise to keep the software copylefted and never proprietarize it (FSF, for example, has always done the latter in assignments).
Why should they promise? It's not their job to promise such things. The, again, are a corporation and have to look after themselves. They are not the FSF which is as far as I remember, a charity. What does Redhat do? Or Novell? We know that SUN required copyright assignment for OOo so it's not unreasonable for corps to have this requirement. If your issue is with code being worked on by individuals not employed by Canonical, with that work then being used in non GPL projects and with the copyright assignment of that work being handed over to Canonical then fair enough - please show me how this happens and where.
>>> When I ask these questions of Canonical, Ltd. employees, they invariably artfully change the subject.
>>> I've written before about my deep skepticism regarding the true motives of Canonical, Ltd.'s advocacy and demand of for-profit corporate copyright assignment without promises to adhere to copyleft.
There is nothing wrong with Canonical requiring copyright assignment. The FSF do it, SUN did it, I would guess Microsoft does it. It is not unusual for a corporation to be a for-profit entity. There is no way someone would do unpaid work for somebody else and get nothing in return unless they were a slave or forced to do so. How would it be even possible to contribute to a Canonical project if you are not part of Canonical if the codebase is not freely accessible or at least in some way open?
>>> I've often asked Canonical employees, including Jono Bacon, Amanda Brock, Jane Silber, Mark Shuttleworth himself, and — in the comments of this very blog post — Matt Asay to explain (a) why exactly they demand copyright assignment on their projects, rather than merely having contributors agree to the GNU GPL formally (like projects such as Linux do),
That's interesting because the issue of copyright assignment arose when SCO started the whole litigation thing against Linux (well, Linux companies). Also, again, canonical is a for-profit corp, Linux is a (as you say) project so you can't compare them. I wonder what the policy of the Linux Foundation is?
>>> and (b) why, having received a contributor's copyright assignment, Canonical, Ltd. refuses to promise to keep the software copylefted and never proprietarize it (FSF, for example, has always done the latter in assignments).
Why should they promise? It's not their job to promise such things. The, again, are a corporation and have to look after themselves. They are not the FSF which is as far as I remember, a charity. What does Redhat do? Or Novell? We know that SUN required copyright assignment for OOo so it's not unreasonable for corps to have this requirement. If your issue is with code being worked on by individuals not employed by Canonical, with that work then being used in non GPL projects and with the copyright assignment of that work being handed over to Canonical then fair enough - please show me how this happens and where.
>>> When I ask these questions of Canonical, Ltd. employees, they invariably artfully change the subject.
Seriously. Citation please.