[Fedora-legal-list] Hopefully simple GPL licensing question re Netomata

Tom "spot" Callaway tcallawa at redhat.com
Tue Nov 3 21:42:22 UTC 2009


On 11/03/2009 04:25 PM, David Nalley wrote:
> So I started looking at packaging Netomata (
> http://www.netomata.com/products/ncg ) and came across something that
> raises a flag. The author is also at a conference with me this week,
> so I figured the face time would be a good time to request a change if
> something is required.
> 
> The question I have, is does the 'All Rights Reserved' in each source
> file conflict with the GPLv3 that they claim the package is released
> under, and is it a problem wrt Packaging Guidelines.

Well, they really should drop the "All Rights Reserved", it is no longer
necessary (see: http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/All_rights_reserved).

It is a potential source of confusion, since the GPL grants some rights
to the user which are normally only available to the copyright holder.

However, strictly speaking, it is not a problem for Fedora in this case,
since the "all rights reserved", just means that the copyright holder
hasn't waived those rights (and the GPLv3 doesn't actually waive any
rights). It's a balancing act though, which is why I'd strongly
recommend that they drop the "All Rights Reserved" wording to eliminate
all confusion.

~spot




More information about the Fedora-legal-list mailing list