[License-discuss] All rights reserved in open source licenses

2013-06-16 Thread Eitan Adler
Does anyone know what the phrase All rights reserved means in the
BSD license http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause and
http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause ?

I don't understand what value the phrase adds and it seems to
contradict the remainder of the license.

-- 
Eitan Adler
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Re: [License-discuss] All rights reserved in open source licenses

2013-06-16 Thread John Cowan
Eitan Adler scripsit:

 Does anyone know what the phrase All rights reserved means in the
 BSD license http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause and
 http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause ?

 I don't understand what value the phrase adds and it seems to
 contradict the remainder of the license.

It adds no value whatsoever and has no legal meaning.  It was required
under the 1910 Buenos Aires copyright convention, but all members of
that are now members of the Berne Convention, which forbids the lack of
legal formalities to affect the establishment of a copyright.  Feel free
to strike it out of any license you are reusing.

Furthermore, it does not override the rights explicitly granted: it merely
means that rights not granted are reserved, which is already true under
Berne and all national copyright laws.

-- 
Principles.  You can't say A is John Cowan co...@ccil.org
made of B or vice versa.  All mass  http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
is interaction.  --Richard Feynman
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