Nathanael Nerode wrote: >> Yes, this is what SUCKS about current copyright law. The presumption is >>"All rights reserved unless you have explicit permission". Josh Triplett wrote: >Somehow, I doubt you'd say that about a GPL-licensed package with one >author who wants to grant a proprietary license to make money. The only >difference between this situation and that one is that we like the >license change in one of them. :)
Let me clarify. :-) I have few complaints with the treatment of material for which the authors *claim* copyright. My complaint is about material distributed willy-nilly by its authors with *no* copyright statements and *no* licensing information. Clearly the authors didn't intend "all rights reserved", but that's what current law assumes. In contrast, pre-1986 (I think) US law specified that works published (== deliberately distributed to the public by their authors) without a copyright statement went into the public domain. Note that this email message is subject to copyright, and can't legally be reprinted without permission (except for fair use, such as quotation rights). Under pre-1986 US law, it would be public domain, because I didn't affix a copyright notice. This change has, frankly, made a freaking mess. This is why projects have to have statements like "By submitting a patch, you agree to license it to us under (license of choice)". Under the old law, submitting a patch of your own authorship to a public bug tracking system would be publishing it, and if you did so without a copyright notice -- public domain. ObLicense: Any person may copy and/or distribute this message, with or without modification, in perpetuity, without royalty and without additional license.
