Re: [gNewSense-users] Copyright, but no license: Free or not?

[Sam Geeraerts]

Matthew J. Fisher wrote:
> I've come across a few files in the kernel which have copyright
> statements, but no license. Would these be considered free or unfree? 
>
> The copyright statements don't actually say that any rights are
> reserved. They simply list the authors and copyright dates.
>
> http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Kernel.Ubuntu-hardy-linux-2-6-24-12-22--arch--x86--ia32--fpu32-c
> http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Kernel.Ubuntu-hardy-linux-2-6-24-12-22--arch--x86--ia32--ia32-aout-c
> http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Kernel.Ubuntu-hardy-linux-2-6-24-12-22--arch--x86--ia32--ia32entry-S
> http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Kernel/Ubuntu-hardy-linux-2-6-24-12-22--arch--x86--ia32--ptrace32-c
> http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Kernel.Ubuntu-hardy-linux-2-6-24-12-22--arch--x86--ia32--syscall32-c
> http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Kernel.Ubuntu-hardy-linux-2-6-24-12-22--arch--x86--ia32--sys-ia32-c
>
> Thanks.
What Ali said. Also, see the KFV flow chart [1]. If something is not 
clear, please ask or tell us. We like our documentation to be correct 
and accessible.

About reserved rights: while doing freedom verification I learned that 
the statement "All rights reserved" in a copyright statement doesn't 
mean anything. It used to be required to make explicit that you want all 
rights granted to you by copyright. Nowadays you can just ignore the 
seeming contradiction between "All rights reserved" and at the same time 
"unreserving" some of those rights with a copyleft license.

Do you know about PFV mode for Emacs [2]? Using it is not a requirement, 
but I found that once you get the hang of it (I'm not really an Emacs 
user myself) it can significantly speed up the work.

Welcome to the team!

[1] http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Kernel/DocumentingYourWork
[2] http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Kernel/Kfv-script