[Fedora-legal-list] Some rights reserved

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On 06/25/2010 01:09 AM, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
> This may be a goofy question, but just in case it's not:
> 
> Does changing the stock 3-clause BSD license to say "Some rights
> reserved" instead of "All rights reserved" make any difference at all to
> the meaning of the license?  On the off chance that it actually does,
> can the resulting license still be called "BSD"?  I suspect someone's
> just being cute but I guess it's safer to ask than assume.

Assuming the copyright holder changes it, it becomes yet another BSD
variant.

That specific phrase has a somewhat interesting legal history:

Prior to the Berne Convention, the phrase was required as a result of
the Buenos Aires Convention of 1910 which mandated that some statement
of reservation of rights be made in order to secure protection in
signatory countries of the convention. It was required to add the phrase
as a written notice that all rights granted under existing copyright law
(such as the right to publish a work within a specific area) were
retained by the copyright holder and that legal action might be taken
against infringement.

Basically, at one point in time, if you didn't "reserve all rights",
specifically those provided by copyright law, then you might have run
the risk that those rights would be perceived to be waived.

Thus, it became legal boilerplate, and everyone just started using it,
even though it is no longer necessary, or even useful (because every
country that was a member to the 1910 Buenos Aires Convention is now
also a member of the Berne Convention (notably, the US did not join
until 1988).

So, does it make any difference at all in how that license is
interpreted? IMHO, no, as the license would have the same meaning even
if the "All Rights Reserved" line was removed entirely.

~spot