Joe Wells <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > donkyhotay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> FYI my name is kevin but admittedly I rarely use it online. I just read >> the GPL FAQ a few days ago and I would recommend everyone to read it but >> here is my understanding of the parts that affect us. First of all in >> order for something to be placed under GPL it must BE copyrighted and >> the author must state somewhere that it is copyrighted and under the >> GPL. If the person just says it's under the GPL but doesn't mention that >> it's copyrighted, the software can't be protected by the GPL and can >> legally be "stolen" (since the copyright is the only legal way to assert >> GPL rights). Now while it has never been officially stated I would >> assume anyone who didn't bother to list themselves in the authors page >> would fall under the catagory of not bothering to copyright their glob2 >> submissions and therefore we can do whatever we want with it (like put >> it in our program and license it under GPL3). > > It is good that you want to help with the process of updating to the > GPL version 3, but what you write above is false and following your > suggestion could cause serious problems. > > A person does not need to make a statement about copyright in order to > have copyright. They just need to have authored some material. The > Berne convention on copyright (which most countries have joined) makes > this clear. In particular countries, whether you make a statement of > copyright can affect the amount of damages you can claim for copyright > infringement, but it can not affect whether you have the copyright.
A message I was sent privately leads me to think I should add the following comments to clarify what I wrote. A copyright notice helps with enforcing the copyright. The lack of a copyright notice does not mean there is no copyright, and it does not mean that we can disregard the author's wishes. The lack of a copyright notice and a clear statement of permission to copy (generally an accompanying license) on someone else's work in fact means we might not even have any permission to copy at all. I hope this helps. -- Joe _______________________________________________ glob2-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/glob2-devel
