Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce From: Ian Jackson Subject: Copyright and licensing - a plea to software authors Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 14:10:28 GMT If you are the author or maintainer of a piece of software intended to be used under Linux please think very hard about what copyright notice you attach to your work. Many programs, often written especially for Linux, are being distributed with copyright notices which are unclear, or prevent distribution on CD-ROM, or often both. Some even don't come with copyright notices and permission statements at all, which means that all the users who download and use the program in question are in violation of the author's copyright ! I would therefore strongly urge all members of the Linux development community to consider whether using the GNU General Public Licence, the Library GPL (LGPL) or perhaps a BSD UCB style copyright will serve their goals better than a notice they hack up themselves. Linus himself has said in an interview with the Linux Journal that releasing Linux under the GPL was the best design decision he had made. Remember that if you put an awkward or unclear copyright notice on your work you will be restricting the number of people who gain access to your software. A few myths dispelled: * Releasing your software under the GPL does _not_ donate it to the Free Software Foundation or relinquish _your_ rights to modify or distribute it. It merely gives other people rights to do certain things, and ensures that no-one can deny others those rights. For example, Larry Wall has released Perl under both the GPL and his own "Artistic Licence". * The GPL does _not_ imply an interface copyright. It does _not_ require other people who write independent programs which run on or with your software to release their work under the GPL. The statement at the top of the COPYING file in the Linux source tree is redundant, other than for clarity's sake and to silence ignorant flamers. * Code which does not carry a copyright notice is _not_ public domain, and people may _not_ do what they want with it. In fact, in the absence of a statement saying what they may do or an explicit notice saying the code is in the public domain they may not do _anything_ with it ! If you wish to place your work in the public domain, so that anyone can do anything with it - including making their own derivations and placing their own copyright on them without crediting you - you must say so explicitly, for example with "I hereby relinquish my copyright and place this work in the public domain". Finally, note that in this posting I am _not_ seeking to limit your right to put whatever copyright licence on your work you feel is right. I'm trying to make you as a developer more conscious of the ramifications of your decisions, so that you can make your own decision about whether you want to benefit the Linux community and if so how you wish to do so. There is a FAQ on copyright law (mainly US law) which is posted to a number of groups regularly including news.answers. It can be found on rtfm.mit.edu in /pub/usenet/news.answers/Copyright-FAQ and in mirrors thereof.