Matthew Garrett

You clearly haven't read the full trext of FSF's copyright assginment. It was carefully written to bind them too. I've not seen as much effort put into a copyright assignment as that one to make sure that they would also be bound by it and could not wiggle out. Even if they could find a way, distributing proprietary software would be against their non-profit mission. As a 501(c)(3) they're legally obligated to operate in the public interest or risk their non-profit status. Even if they were willing to give up their non-profit status and still turned it into non-free software, I would encourage everyone with a copyright assignment on file to start a lawsuit over breach of contract. Remember that they made the promise (that people relied on) to keep the software free as a condition of people transferring their copyright to the FSF in the first place. In that event I'd be one of the first in line. So, in the FSF, there are multiple levels of defenses in place to make sure that they FSF remains a trustworthy copyright steward. This isn't usually the case when people point to the FSF's copyright assignment process as a justification for their own.