From: Christian Neukirchen Date: 2005-05-13T03:15:44+09:00 Subject: Re: [OT] Request for advice on applying a license Nikolai Weibull writes: >> On May 12, 2005, at 9:16 AM, Christian Neukirchen wrote: > >> > IANAL, but isn't the file copyrighted automatically due to the Berne >> > Convention? > >> Yes, I believe that's true. But it's still probably good practice to >> apply a notice, I think. > > Well, it���s _copyrighted_ without question. Anything I create, I own. > That���s not the question, though��. The question is how I apply a license > to something that I have a copyright on. The copyright gives me more or > less exclusive right to whatever���s copyrighted. The point of a license > is to state what rights to the material that I give other people. Ok, IIRC the GNU GPL only *grants* you rights (that you obviously wouldn't have by default). Therefore it is actually rather easy (but IANAL)... just don't enforce the rights you would have granted if the GPL was applied correctly in case it was not. IOW: Don't sue if they do what you want them to do, even if they wouldn't actually be allowed to do that. > So > the question remains, what exactly do I need to do to ensure license > coverage of a set of files? My hope is that I don���t have to go the GNU > way of including a license notice in every file I want included, but > instead only those that will be covered by a different license, if any, > thus having a project-wide default license, e.g., in a LICENSE or > COPYING file in the project root directory. This is how the Linux > kernel code does it, so my guess is that it���s perfectly safe in every > way, but I was wondering if anyone knew otherwise, This sounds ok... > nikolai -- Christian Neukirchen http://chneukirchen.org