[perl #39217] [TODO] legal - eliminate "All Rights Reserved."
Allison Randal
# Please include the string: [perl #39217]
# in the subject line of all future correspondence about this issue.
# <URL: 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 <years>, The Perl Foundation.
Allison
Will Coleda
./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" ?
--
Will "Coke" Coleda
wi...@coleda.com
Leopold Toetsch
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
Allison Randal
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 <years>, The Perl Foundation.
Whoops, typo, that's:
Copyright (C) <years>, The Perl Foundation.
Allison
Allison Randal
>
> 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
Randal L. Schwartz
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. :)
--
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<mer...@stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
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Allison Randal
>
> 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
Paul Johnson
> >>Copyright notices should have the form:
> >>
> >> Copyright <years>, The Perl Foundation.
>
> Whoops, typo, that's:
>
> Copyright (C) <years>, 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 - pa...@pjcj.net
http://www.pjcj.net
Will Coleda via RT
- All TPF copyrights are now marked as:
Copyright (C) <years>, 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.