On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 12:03:18PM +1000, Justin Clift wrote: > > Not sure this is a good idea. I asked RH Legal a while back > for the right text to use (something which includes > contributors), but haven't heard back from them. > > I'll ping them again now.
So we've talked about this in the past, albeit without a lawyer. There are several reasons that we thought it was okay. One is that a copyright footer on a webpage normally indicates that the *content* of the page is copyrighted. I worked for a hosted site before coming here, and our copyright notice indicated that we owned the content. Our stylesheets and whatnot had text at the top indicating that they were also protected by copyright. But we're trying to use it in a very different way, to indicate that the software powering the site is covered by content, versus claiming copyright on a user's content (like their list of pools or deployable files). It's ambiguous what it even means. Additionally, at least in the US, copyright is to be assumed. If you write a crappy poem, it's covered by copyright automatically. You don't have to explicitly claim it to be protected. Moreover, every single file in our project that contains source code has a header added claiming copyright. So it's very hard to miss if you were actually going to try to violate our copyright. Third, outside of web apps, there is little precedent for the "display a copyright warning on every single view of the application" pattern. I presently have open Firefox, xchat, bash, vim, GNOME Terminal, Nautilus, and mutt. Not a single one is displaying a copyright notice. That has no bearing on whether they are copyrighted. Of course, I am not a lawyer, and not even terribly well-versed in law, so all of this is nothing but my personal opinion. But I think that asking what phrasing is best for a copyright statement is a very different question from, "Must we include a copyright statement in the footer of every single page of our application for our application to be protected by copyright?". -- Matt
