qjail fork attribution was Handbook Jail Chapter rewrite available for critique (fwd)

[Stephen Cook]

On 4/1/2013 5:23 AM, Ian Smith wrote:
> One does not have to be a lawyer to know the lack of any license verbiage
> embedded in computer programs released to the public becomes property of public
> domain forever. Putting license verbiage on your next port version is
> unenforceable because it's already property of public domain.

I don't know enough about the original disagreement to comment on it, 
but this part is completely untrue. IANAL but I can use Google and 
common sense.

Under the Berne Convention, if there is no notice included with a 
copyrightable work, it defaults to "all rights reserved". Until you 
receive explicit permission, or a permissive license is included, it is 
assumed that you *cannot* legally copy or derive from that work.

So, if there is no license at all attached to ezjail, as you say, you 
are infringing copyright. Luckily for you, the ezjail web page declares 
it to be licensed as Beer Ware after all.

Nothing personal, I just tend to correct people when they make up laws, 
especially after a long enough period where I didn't get to criticize 
anyone's grammar. :-)


-- Stephen