[En-Nut-Discussion] RFC: Copyright of trivial code

[Nathan Moore]

On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 6:32 AM, Bernd Walter <enut at cicely.de> wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 09:47:00AM +0100, Harald Kipp wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > there are several simple files, for which a copyright notice looks
> > overdone to me, specifically header and make files.
> >
> > I suggest to change their copyright to
> >
> > "The authors disclaim all copyrights and release this document into
> > the public domain."
>
> You can't disclaim a copyright and you don't need to declare it
> to have a copyright.
> An author always has the copyright - declared or not and he can't ever
> loose it.
>

This varies greatly from place to place.  Some jurisdictions do have
transfer of
copyright ownership, and some jurisdictions allow you to relinquish
ownership
to the public domain.  This is international, so it's very complicated.

I think the main issue with changing the copyright notices in any way are
that
all owners (for all jurisdictions perspectives) need to agree to those
changes.

Anyway, I am not a lawyer in any jurisdiction, so I could be very wrong on
this,
but it is my understanding of the issues here.

Nathan