Hi Gerhard, Gerhard Roth wrote on Wed, Jun 08, 2016 at 03:08:52PM +0200:
> +.\" Copyright (c) 2016 genua mbH > + * Copyright (c) 2016 genua mbH These kinds of Copyright notices without the name of the actual author are misleading. The purpose of a Copyright notice is to inform the reader who enjoys rights with respect to the Works; while they are not legally required to establish Copyright and purely of advisory nature, it is hard in practice, often almost impossible, to find out who holds rights without them. So putting incorrect or incomplete information in Copyright notices defeats the very purpose of these notices. Please never do that. According to international law, specifically Article 6bis of the Berne Convention (1886, last amended 1979), even when transferring all the economic rights, the original author of a Works always retains the Moral Rights, including the following: "Independently of the author's economic rights, and even after the transfer of the said rights, the author shall have the right to claim authorship of the work and to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to, the said work, which would be prejudicial to his honor or reputation." So not naming the author in the Copyright notice effectively subverts the author's most fundamental inalienable right: Being known as the author - without which the other moral rights against derogatory action etc. lose most of their power. At the very least, the name of the author must be included, for example as follows: Copyright (c) 2016 genua mbH This software was written by Gerhard Roth. But actually, company names on ISC software licences are silly. The ISC license is specifically designed to grant all rights under Copyright that can legally be granted except one: To relicense. But relicensing never has any effect since that ISC license already grants all rights; relicensing under a different license could only grant less rights, which would have no legal effect but might confuse people unaware of the original grant of the ISC license. The ISC license only explicitly reserves one right: To be known as the author. And that cannot ever be given away (see Article 6bis above). So technically, if genua mbH insists on "(C) genua mbH", what they are actually saying is this: "Look, in the future, we might wish to decide to attempt to deceive people into believing that this software is less free than it actually is, so we reserve the right to relicense under a less free license; or we mistrust the author and fear that he himself might attempt this deception, so we legally bar the author from re-releasing his own code." In my book, both would make them look somewhat silly. So please get their OK for: Copyright (c) 2016 Gerhard Roth. If they want acknowledgement for supporting the development, which would only be fair if they did support it, that acknowledgement does not belong inside, but after the license, for example: * Copyright (c) 2016 Gerhard Roth. * * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any * [...] * OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. * * Development of this software was supported by genua mbH. Of course, if you have a working contract with them, they may be allowed to insist on the silly line "Copyright (c) 2016 genua mbH" if they want to. But even if they try to forbid you from adding This software was written by Gerhard Roth. they cannot prevent that. Even if your working contract would say that you transfer all your rights including the Moral Rights, that part of it would be null and void. Note that the form you used might be considered legal in the U.S. because the U.S. still doesn't fully implement the Berne Convention, after all those 130 years. Last time i checked, the U.S. still allowed companies to strip authors of rights that are inalienable by international law. But in most other countries, in particular those that respect international law, and specifically in Germany, your version of the Copyright notice seriously misrepresents the legal situation. And none of my proposed versions is illegal in the U.S., by the way. Yours, Ingo
