On Friday 21 March 2008, Theo de Raadt wrote: > > Too late. ;) > > > > It looks like the old ISC code or almost the original BSD license, > > which I cannot find. I'm getting worse at searching, but it seems > > things are disappearing, too. > > Note even just using the word "license" creates confusion, since > license implies contract law. Outside the US, the rest of the world > does not use contract law for copyright. In the entire world, > copyright grants you all rights to something until you surrender some > rights, with a piece of text, but that text only loosely called a > license. > > In OpenBSD we use an ISC-style copyright text since it does what is > needed. It is simply a statement of right granting... > > 1) Declaration of copyright by the author > > 2) A decleration that the author retains the right to be known as > the author, but surrenders all other rights granted by the law. (In > copyright law if the author does not surrended a right, he retains > it; in this way we revoke all rights except the one we care about). > > 3) Because of the existance of both declerations together, it > therefore means that the text cannot be removed from the files. If > someone removes the first (1) line, then there is nothing to say that > the rights grant (2) is under copyright law since anyone could have > written it; alternatively if that someone deletes the rights grant > (2), then there is no indication that any rights are granted -- thus, > by copyright law, they were not granted. So anyone who > changes/removes the text is reducing their rights to the files. > > That is enough to satisfy every legal system on the planet which > follows the Berne Convention. Some legal systems require even less > than what the ISC license does, since they base their national > copyright laws more strictly on the original intent behind the Berne > convention -- ie. the European concept of the moral rights of the > author, ie. the original idea behind the treaty. > > (The 2/3-term BSD license meant to do basically the same, but it used > more words to do the same. The old 4-term BSD license included some > terms to make University of California benefit from advertising, if > there was going to be any.) > > Watch out for the new ISC license, because the FSF lawyers have > convinced the ISC to do something totally stupid. It now uses a > phrase "and/or" to mean "or", but some country's legal systems might > not understand "and/or" in the way the old "or" was used in the > sentence. I disagree with what ISC did; I am not confident that > their change is good. > > > The attribution requirement seems to suggest that the Creative > > Commons Attribution license is a close match: > > http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ > > > > For the sake of conformity I would something with a URL hosted by a > > well-known project. > > Please avoid using that creativecommons bullshit for anything -- it > it tries to hide the fundamentals and simplicity of basic copyright > law behind the massive complexity of US-centric contract law and the > various terminology normally tied to tit for tat. In the end, > creativecommons licenses will only ever truly benefit one group of > people on this planet: The lawyers. > > Copyright does not need contract law to keep things free. What those > creativecommons people are feeding people is a fraud. I (and many > many others) give software away so that the whole world world can > benefit, but if there was one group who should benefit last it is the > bottom feeding assholes who make giving away harder than it needs to > be. > > And that is exactly what creativecommons tries to do. 2300 words > to say "you must say I wrote it"? There is only one reason it could > take 2300 words: The goal is to deceive.
With a cousin and soon a brother who are lawyers, I can say there is at least one more reason why it takes 2300 words of bullshit contact law to give something away and retain attribution; it keeps the US lawyers in business. Kind Regards, JCR
