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Bug#335898: bogus "all rights reserved" message



Robert Millan wrote:
> 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.

Not unless you are the copyright holder.

>>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. 

That is correct.

> 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.

In the absence of some additional terms constituting a Free license:
yes, the same way that "Copyright 2005 J. Random Hacker" means you have
no right to use the software.

> However,
> the licensing terms in the source code should take preference.

Correct.  If additional clarification is desired at boot time, a note
could be added saying that the software was available under the BSD
license; alternatively, you could remove the copyright notice *from the
boot messages* (since it is not the copyright notice which is governing
the work).

- Josh Triplett

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