Re: Choosing a License: GNU APL? AFL 3.0?
On Jan 2, 2008 11:12 AM, Sean B. Palmer <sean@miscoranda.com> wrote:
> Okay. So is the preservation of copyright notices already explicit in
> copyright law?
I'm pretty sure the answer to that would be "no", not least because
most jurisdictions have no requirements for copyright notices anyway
(copyright arising automatically without any formalities).
So if someone gives you blanket permission to modify a work, then that
would include the right to modify the copyright notices. However,
actually doing so may then conflict with other rights the author may
have, separate from copyright - e.g. "moral rights" giving an author
to be identified as such.
Plus, a general legal requirement to preserve copyright notices would
also require a general legal definition of "copyright notice", which
would not necessarily be a simple matter. If I put the following in a
copyright work: "(C) 2007 John Halton. All rights reserved. Licensed
under GPL v.3 or later. Absolutely no warranty applies to the maximum
attempt possible by law. Copies of any modifications would be
appreciated but are not required. Bespoke development work may be
carried out by author on request - please contact me for details.
Debian rocks!!!", at what point has that ceased to be a "copyright
notice" and become something else?
John
(TINLA)
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