Licence has self conflicting wording, possible typo
jimboolio opened this issue · comments
Checklist
- I have searched the issue tracker for open issues that relate to the same problem, before opening a new one.
- This issue only relates to a single bug. I will open new issues for any other problems.
Describe the bug
The LICENSE file has a BSD-3 Clause license but in between the usual BSD license rows there's the string "All rights reserved".
I did confirm on Wikipedia that this "all rights reserved" usually is used to indicate that the authors do not want their work to be copied or used or modified unless a permission is obtained. In software I think it is reasonable to expect that any kind of usage or modification without explicit permission would be prohibited when something has the words "all rights reserved". BSD license itself grants quite an wide set of rights, but all rights reserved grants none. I find this very conflicting and expect it to be a bug in either my understanding or in the wording. Either way it might deserve some clarification.
(removed boilerplate issue template here since technical details are unrelated on legal question, this issue appears at least on the master branch)
I did confirm on Wikipedia that this "all rights reserved" usually is used to indicate that the authors do not want their work to be copied or used or modified unless a permission is obtained.
That isn't what the wikipedia article says to me at all. That phrase is included as part of the copyright and not a license term. In many geographies it is included and omission of it will not change the impact of copyright. Here in the UK copyright is automatically applied to any work created unless explicitly waived.
Open source is not about waiving copyright ownership, but about collaborating under suitable licensing terms so that everyone can use and contribute to the project.
The following article may be helpful - I appreciate it's not an identical license https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/2121/mit-license-and-all-rights-reserved
The format we used is in some templates - such as this one: https://gist.github.com/nicolasdao/a7adda51f2f185e8d2700e1573d8a633#tldr---the-bsd-3-clause-license-should-do
As well as others. Due to it relating to the copyright and not the license I don't think this is an issue.