From owner-freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Thu Sep 15 08:34:03 2016 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-ports@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 15AADBDC3F3 for ; Thu, 15 Sep 2016 08:34:03 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mailinglists@toco-domains.de) Received: from toco-domains.de (mail.toco-domains.de [176.9.39.170]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id D14461B7A for ; Thu, 15 Sep 2016 08:34:02 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mailinglists@toco-domains.de) Received: from [0.0.0.0] (mail.toco-domains.de [IPv6:2a01:4f8:150:50a5::6]) by toco-domains.de (Postfix) with ESMTPA id 5326D1AAF046; Thu, 15 Sep 2016 10:33:59 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Re: LICENSE documentation To: Dave Horsfall , FreeBSD Ports References: <20160914081915.72e9cf14@raksha.tavi.co.uk> <9d155596-2137-c385-e557-32431e88c0f8@gmail.com> <20160914084935.GL85563@home.opsec.eu> From: Torsten Zuehlsdorff Message-ID: Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2016 10:33:59 +0200 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.2.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting software to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2016 08:34:03 -0000 On 14.09.2016 23:05, Dave Horsfall wrote: > On Wed, 14 Sep 2016, Kurt Jaeger wrote: > >> This interpretation is based on the hypothesis that the user is located >> in a country that has this kind of legal rule. >> >> This is not the case in every country, so your conclusion is not always >> valid. > > What percentage of countries are signatories to the Berne Convention? > Last I looked, only nice friendly places such as China and North Korea > were holding out (and USA was one of the last to sign, and even then with > conditions). That is not the only factor. You're quote misses Kurts statement "If no license statement can be found in the sources or the website, then no permission is given, and it's technically illegal for anyone but the author(s) to use the software." This for example is true for Germany, which signed the Berne Convention. But the German law for example makes it impossible to say "i have no right on the source i wrote by myself". You always have the right and it is impossible to resign it. So its even possible that you define a LICENSE like "public domain", but it would be wrong, since a german author is not possible to do this by german laws. Define no license means all rights are yours, but not if you wrote the code for your employer. In this case you have all rights of the source, but give a full usage/distribution/some-more-rights to it. So in conclusion: licenses are a complex thing. Greetings, Torsten