Re: All rights reserved?
Alp Toker wrote:
> Is the term "All rights reserved" compatible with Open Source/Free
> Software licensing?
Yes. It means only that you do not implicitly surrender rights under the
Buenos Aires treaty of 1910, a treaty which is now essentially obsolete
since every signatory of the Buenos Aires treaty has also signed the Berne
Convention, which requires no copyright notices at all.
(It may not be entirely obsolete because it has some other interesting
clauses which say other odd things, but it's obsolete with regard to this.)
> If so, is it still considered bad form?
Yes.
> I've taken up maintainership of
> some code with headers that go:
>
> /* Copyright (c) 2006 Joe Author. All rights reserved.
> * <standard free license here>
> */
>
> Should the original authors be asked to change this, or is this a case
> of splitting hairs?
It doesn't matter, but you could just change it to
"Copyright 2006 Joe Author."
As far as I can tell, you're generally allowed to replace copyright
statements with substantively identical copyright statements, unless the
license prohibits it.
The (c) is also worthless (and always has been worthless). An actual
copyright symbol would be worth somthing: automatic copyright protection in
countries which signed the UCC but not Berne or TRIPS (the WTO agreement).
Currently those countries are:
* Andorra
* Cambodia
* Laos
* Saudi Arabia
* Turkmenistan
* Uzbekistan
If you care deeply about copyright in those countries. ;-)
And according to the US copyright office, the status of the Comoros,
Kiribati, Nauru, North Korea, Palau, Sao Tome and Principe, the Seychelles,
Somalia, Syria, Tuvalu, and Yemen is "Unclear". As if you cared.
>
> For the sake of keeping on-topic:
>
> alp@rover:/usr/share/doc$ grep -ri "all rights reserved" * | wc -l
> 2204
--
Nathanael Nerode <neroden@twcny.rr.com>
Bush admitted to violating FISA and said he was proud of it.
So why isn't he in prison yet?...
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