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autofs copyright by Transmeta 'all rights reserved' ??

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Kurt Fitzner

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Dec 19, 1997, 3:00:00 AM12/19/97

I was going through the source for autofs in the new 2.0.33 kernel and
noticed that it was copyight by Transmeta (which was interesting in and
of itself) corporation with 'All rights reserved'. The statement then
goes on to say it is placed under GPL.

I was wondering... what exactly does 'all rights reserved' mean in this
context? The GPL is quite specific about what rights the rest of the
world has WRT a piece of code. Are there other rights not mentioned, or
is this a statment that the code is released under GPL, but that the GPL
'rights' are reserved, or able to be revoked?

Grepping through the source code found me X .c files with the phrase
'All rights reserved'. Some had other statements along with it that
were more or less restrictive than GPL. One was:

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this
software and its documentation for any purpose and without
fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright
notice appear in all copies. Stanford University
makes no representations about the suitability of this
software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without
express or implied warranty.

Which essentially states that with the exception of the requirement of a
copyright notice needing to appear, essentially no rights are reserved.

If someone could explain this, I would be appreciative.

Jay Ts

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Dec 19, 1997, 3:00:00 AM12/19/97

Kurt Fitzner wrote:
>
> I was going through the source for autofs in the new 2.0.33 kernel and
> noticed that it was copyight by Transmeta (which was interesting in and
> of itself) corporation with 'All rights reserved'. The statement then
> goes on to say it is placed under GPL.

First of all, I am anything but an expert on the subject of copyright
law. End of disclaimer. ;-)

Some years ago, I was trying to learn as much as my legally-challenged
mind could concerning the topic of copyrights. I found out that the
"All rights reserved" statement was included to maintain the copyright
in some countries (e.g., countries in South America) where the shorter
form, "Copyright <year> <name>" would not be enough to keep all rights.
I'll attempt to explain this: In the U.S., a notice such as "Copyright
1970 Joe American" used to be sufficient to maintain all rights. That
is, if you held the copyright, and did not give away rights, you kept
them by default. But in other countries, simply holding the copyright
was not enough, you had to tell people that you were *not* giving away
any rights, thus, "All rights reserved.")

If the GPL is included along with that statement, then it may not mean
very much. ;-) The two would seem to contradict each other a little ...
"I'm holding onto *everything* and giving you *this*."

Since Linux is a patchwork of code from many sources, I guess this kind
of thing is bound to happen. It's easier to get programmers to agree on
technical issues than legal ones. :-)

- Jay Ts

--
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To be o' not t'be, dat be de bottom line. What it is, Mama!
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