svn commit: r333880 - head/sys/kern

[Pedro Giffuni]

On 19/05/2018 16:02, Warner Losh wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, May 19, 2018 at 2:32 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk at phk.freebsd.dk 
> <mailto:phk at phk.freebsd.dk>> wrote:
>
>     --------
>     In message
>     <CANCZdfrMjf8LgwUy4rL53m-XAM9P0fa-cb=cD5+V5Br+evussw at mail.gmail.com
>     <mailto:cD5%2BV5Br%2Bevussw at mail.gmail.com>>
>     , Warner Losh writes:
>
>     >> > Log:
>     >> >   Restore the all rights reserved language.
>
>     "All Rights Reserved" is boilerplate from the old "Buenos Aires"
>     copyright convention, (a purely N+S American affair) and it lost
>     all meaning and relevance for UCB when USA ratified the Berne
>     Convention 60 years ago.
>
>
> The US ratified the Berne Convention in 1989, which falls in the 
> middle of the 4.x BSD releases... Relevant for 4.3, but not 4.4.
>
>     The final Buenos Aires signatory joined Berne a couple of decades
>     ago, rendering the convention null and void, and therefore this
>     boilerplate has no meaning or relevance for anybody.
>
>
> Right, I get that. However, someone removed it. Even though it's 
> useless at this point, I don't believe we can remove it.
>
For the record, and with the usual disclaimer that I am *not* a lawyer ...

I attended a talk from a lawyer from Google that explained adding the 
"All Rights Reserved" line didn't mean what it intended to mean 
previously (or much at all) but that removing it was intended as having 
a meaning. In sum, and while I didn't completely grasp the issue is not 
clear all lawyers would agree on removing the line.

For old code it is what is, but perhaps the effort should be done for 
new code, starting here:

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/pref-license.html

Feel free to take it to core and a real lawyer :).

Cheers,

Pedro.