Re: Why assign copyright?
The license already does that. An author who releases something as GPL can't unilaterally change the license because they've already released it. They can release it under a different license if they wish, and they can refuse to send the code to you anymore under the GPL. If anyone else has a copy though, they can edit it or publish it without limitation.
The issue with the people who pulled packages wasn't that the code couldn't be resurrected. The issue was that people were downloading the package and the downloads broke. Similar to what would happen if you were pulling something from a public server I ran and I shut it down. All they had to do was change the download location to somewhere where the packages could be found and things worked again.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
