Re: What does "disclaiming a copyright mean"?
On 4/19/06, Seth David Schoen <schoen@loyalty.org> wrote:
> Andrew Donnellan writes:
>
> > Disclaiming a copyright means releasing into the public domain. (as in
> > no copyright at all). IANAL, but looking at what the license file
> > says, I would assume it to be copyrighted by Said Abdeddaim and
> > released under the LGPL, but the parts written by Burkhard Morgenstern
> > are PD.
>
> I disagree. This paragraph is boilerplate from the GPL (in the section
> on applying the GPL's terms and conditions to your own work). I believe
> the goal is to have a third party (like an employer) state that it does
> not have a copyright interest in a work, so that other people can rely
> more easily on the licensor's statement that the licensor licenses the
> work under the GPL.
I'll disagree further - Burkhard Morgenstern is a professor at the
University of Gottingen, and he is listed specifically as one of the
authors. If it was an employer disclaiming copyright interest,
wouldn't it be done by an authorised representative of a
company/organisation?
andrew
>
> The goal of the copyright disclaimer would then be to reduce uncertainty
> about whether the employer might later claim copyright (perhaps because
> the program could be considered a "work made for hire" or perhaps
> because the employer's contract with the employee normally gives the
> employer rights in programs written by the employee) and then try to
> apply terms inconsistent with the GPL terms to it.
>
> The person who issues a copyright disclaimer is not saying that there
> is no copyright -- just that he or she doesn't claim any copyright. I
> don't know if there are court cases that interpret the effect of this
> disclaimer in various jurisdictions.
>
> --
> Seth David Schoen <schoen@loyalty.org> | This is a new focus for the security
> http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | community. The actual user of the PC
> http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/ | [...] is the enemy.
> | -- David Aucsmith, IDF 1999
>
--
Andrew Donnellan
http://andrewdonnellan.com
http://ajdlinux.blogspot.com
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