[perl #39217] [TODO] legal - eliminate "All Rights Reserved."
This is done, as of r12825. - All TPF copyrights are now marked as: Copyright (C) , The Perl Foundation. - All YAS copyrights and Leo copyrights are now listed as TPF. There are still non TPF copyrights in the repository, and many of these are still marked as 'All Rights Reserved'; I think a decision should be made about these items on a case by case basis: some of these files are copied wholesale into the repo, and therefore should retain their original copyright. Others were probably implicitly transferred to TPF when committed.
Re: [perl #39217] [TODO] legal - eliminate "All Rights Reserved."
On Fri, May 26, 2006 at 01:57:40PM -0700, Allison Randal wrote: > >>Copyright notices should have the form: > >> > >> Copyright , The Perl Foundation. > > Whoops, typo, that's: > >Copyright (C) , The Perl Foundation. Are you sure? As I understand things, the symbol (C), that is the letter C in parentheses, has no legal bearing whatsoever. In general the word "Copyright" is sufficient for international copyright concerns, but if you want to add something else it should be the symbol ©, that is the letter C in a circle. Of course, I'm not a lawyer, but this is what they learned me at college. Though this was at about the same time as countries such as Mauritius, Liberia and the USA were becoming party to the Berne Convention, so maybe that changed things for the USA. I don't think this is the case though. Indeed, http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ03.html only talks about: The symbol © (the letter C in a circle), or the word “Copyright,” or the abbreviation “Copr.” I wouldn't have said anything, but your correction seems to indicate that the (C) is important. Is my information outdated? -- Paul Johnson - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pjcj.net
Re: [perl #39217] [TODO] legal - eliminate "All Rights Reserved."
(Randal L. Schwartz) via RT wrote: According to Brad Templeton's copyright FAQ, it really doesn't mean anything anyway. If I recall, It was needed in a few south american countries, all of whom have become Berne-convention parties now, so it really means nothing. It never meant "rights" in a licensing point of view, so while your actions are agreeable, your motivation is misplaced. :) You've got it half right. It came from the Buenos Aires Convention of 1910, and was commonly used in South American countries. But the U.S. was also a signatory to the convention, so it was used here too. The terms of the Buenos Aires Convention required copyright holders to state that they were reserving rights before they could get any copyright protection, hence the statement "All Rights Reserved" in copyright notices. Open source licenses are copyright licenses, so it is exactly the same "rights" as licensing rights, and we're giving some of them away, not reserving all of them. And yes, the Buenos Aires Convention was effectively replaced by the Berne Convention of 1886, after all the parties of the Buenos Aires Convention became signatories of the Berne Convention in 2000. (Both are still in force, but since the Berne Convention has much wider adoption, it's the one that carries the most weight.) The Berne Convention grants copyright protection even if there isn't any copyright notice. So, "All Rights Reserved" is both false and unnecessary. But, I didn't figure people really wanted to hear all that. :) Allison
Re: [perl #39217] [TODO] legal - eliminate "All Rights Reserved."
Paul Johnson wrote: I wouldn't have said anything, but your correction seems to indicate that the (C) is important. Is my information outdated? It wasn't a correction based on legal requirements, it was a correction based on "this is what we talked about earlier and decided to standardize to" (and a good bit of Parrot is already standardized to it). Legally, there is a very slim reason (related to the Berne Convention) to want to add the copyright symbol instead of just the word "Copyright" or the ASCII representation of the symbol, but it's not hugely significant, and we want to stick with plain text. Allison
Re: [perl #39217] [TODO] legal - eliminate "All Rights Reserved."
> "Allison" == Allison Randal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Allison> The fundamental legal point is that we're not reserving all rights, Allison> because we're distributing the code under an open source Allison> license. Many open source developers include "All Rights Reserved." Allison> in a cargo-cult fashion, without understanding what it means. According to Brad Templeton's copyright FAQ, it really doesn't mean anything anyway. If I recall, It was needed in a few south american countries, all of whom have become Berne-convention parties now, so it really means nothing. It never meant "rights" in a licensing point of view, so while your actions are agreeable, your motivation is misplaced. :) -- Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095 http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/> Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc. See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training!
Re: [perl #39217] [TODO] legal - eliminate "All Rights Reserved."
The fundamental legal point is that we're not reserving all rights, because we're distributing the code under an open source license. Many open source developers include "All Rights Reserved." in a cargo-cult fashion, without understanding what it means. Will Coleda via RT wrote: How does this interact with files like: ./lib/Pod/Simple/HTML.pm:429:Copyright (c) 2002 Sean M. Burke. All rights reserved. I'm the current maintainer of Pod::Simple, and give you permission to remove "All rights reserved." (I'll be removing it from some later release anyway.) Though, I'm not really sure why the module is in Parrot. Would it help if I reimplemented Pod::Simple in Perl 6 as soon as Patrick pushes the Perl 6 compiler far enough? I might even do it in PIR (it would be stunningly simpler in PGE/TGE than it is in Perl 5), though, frankly, I'd rather wait for the Perl 6 skin around PGE/TGE. :) So, you can leave it for now, and just assume we'll be ripping the files out of Parrot later. ./src/bignum.c:2:Copyright (c) 2001-2006 Yet Another Society. All rights reserved. "Yet Another Society" is an older name for "The Perl Foundation". This is just a messy leftover from a previous global update on copyright notices and should read: Copyright (C) 2001-2006, The Perl Foundation. ./runtime/parrot/include/DWIM.pir:305:Copyright (c) 2003, Leopold Toetsch. All Rights Reserved. Individuals retain copyright on the lines of code they write, but we don't preserve individual copyright notices in the repository. From a practical perspective, individual copyright notices are likely to be untrue, because often multiple people edit a file, so the copyright isn't actually owned by one person. From a legal perspective, individual copyright notices on contributed pieces aren't meaningful because everyone who receives the pieces gets them as part of the compilation, and all they need to know is the compilation copyright owner. So, eventually that'll be: Copyright (C) 2003, The Perl Foundation. (But there's no need to rush on that. And, of course, Leo can remove the file if he didn't intend it to be distributed as part of Parrot, but somehow I think that's unlikely. :) Copyright notices should have the form: Copyright , The Perl Foundation. Whoops, typo, that's: Copyright (C) , The Perl Foundation. Allison
Re: [perl #39217] [TODO] legal - eliminate "All Rights Reserved."
On May 26, 2006, at 20:25, Will Coleda wrote: and ./runtime/parrot/include/DWIM.pir:305:Copyright (c) 2003, Leopold Toetsch. All Rights Reserved. just rewrite these (m/Toetsch/) to any needed format. Thanks, leo
Re: [perl #39217] [TODO] legal - eliminate "All Rights Reserved."
How does this interact with files like: ./lib/Pod/Simple/HTML.pm:429:Copyright (c) 2002 Sean M. Burke. All rights reserved. and ./src/bignum.c:2:Copyright (c) 2001-2006 Yet Another Society. All rights reserved. and ./runtime/parrot/include/DWIM.pir:305:Copyright (c) 2003, Leopold Toetsch. All Rights Reserved. Each of which, I think, has a slightly different answer? Should this ticket's scope be amended to "just files marked copyright TPF" ? On May 26, 2006, at 1:59 PM, Allison Randal (via RT) wrote: # New Ticket Created by Allison Randal # Please include the string: [perl #39217] # in the subject line of all future correspondence about this issue. # https://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=39217 > Remove the phrase "All Rights Reserved." from every copyright line in every file in the repository. Copyright notices should have the form: Copyright , The Perl Foundation. Allison -- Will "Coke" Coleda [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[perl #39217] [TODO] legal - eliminate "All Rights Reserved."
# New Ticket Created by Allison Randal # Please include the string: [perl #39217] # in the subject line of all future correspondence about this issue. # https://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=39217 > Remove the phrase "All Rights Reserved." from every copyright line in every file in the repository. Copyright notices should have the form: Copyright , The Perl Foundation. Allison
