On Monday, February 14, 2005 12:27 am, Luke-Jr wrote: > As long as the person adding the copyright statement is the original > creator, I don't see any good reason why it would be invalid.
Although it may not be convenient, the copyright laws of most countries require assignment to be done in writing, not implicitly through notices. This also applies to foreign copyrights that are granted by way of multilateral governmental treaties. From <http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#toc>: "Any or all of the copyright owner's exclusive rights or any subdivision of those rights may be transferred, but the transfer of exclusive rights is not valid unless that transfer is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed or such owner's duly authorized agent." > Any more > formal a procedure would result in nothing being in the public domain > (since p.d. is a complete disclaim of copyright), and that certainly is not > the case. My original message shouldn't have included disclamation of copyrights in that context. In this sense, you're correct: a simply worded message is adequate to place a piece of software in the public domain, presuming you have the full entitlement required to do so. > Seriously, I don't see why most ebuilds are even copyrighted. > On the occasions that I write ebuilds, I > usually just stick them in the public domain. On this point I agree, public-domain software seems quite suitable for ebuilds. I can't see any reason that an ebuild would need to be copyrighted, as it has no use outside of the Portage tree. It could be derived into another piece of software, but as you mentioned, the code is trivial by nature. -- Anthony Gorecki Ectro-Linux Foundation
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