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Bug#335898: bogus "all rights reserved" message



On Wed, Oct 26, 2005 at 11:16:14AM -0500, Jeffrey L. Taylor wrote:
> Quoting Robert Millan <rmh@aybabtu.com>:
> > Package: kfreebsd-5
> > Severity: normal
> > 
> > The following lines are printed by kFreeBSD when boot starts:
> > 
> > "Copyright (c) 1992-2005 The FreeBSD Project.
> > Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
> >         The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved."
> > 
> > I think there two problems with that:
> > 
> >   - "All rights reserved" would imply that the software is not licensed at all,
> >     which isn't true.  The answers I got from #debian-devel indicate it's
> >     perfectly legal to remove this message for clarification.
> > 
> IIRC, the phrase "All rights reserved." is required for copyrighted
> material in some Latin American countries.  Without it, it isn't
> copyrighted.  I.e., "All rights reserved." is the equivalent of
> "Copyright 2005 I. Author".  Of course, IANAL. 

According to what I've been told in #debian-devel (which makes sense to me),
"all rights reserved" means you have no right to use this software.  However,
the licensing terms in the source code should take preference.

I'm CCing debian-legal, perhaps they can mirror some light into this.

-- 
Robert Millan



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