Fun with copyright

Posted by Nico Golde in
Tuesday, April 17. 2007

Today I stumbled over the copyright file for Debian for revoco because of an RFS (request for sponsor).

To quote from http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/r/revoco/revoco_0.3-1.diff.gz

License:
In revoco.c is written, a bonobo has written the code,
so no copyright applies.

I got the following mail from the owner of the bonobo, after asking
about the licence of the code (the mail is in German, English tranlation
follows):

[...]
English translation:

> In revoco.c it's written:
> Written November 2006 by E. Toernig's bonobo - no copyrights.
> For German law that is wrong, you have written it,

Why do you think so? It was written by my bonobo!

> so it is your copyright.

No. If any, so of the bonobo. But because the creations of animals
are not "protected" by the copyright-laws,
it is public domain (or maybe "bonoboware?).

[...]

> Would it be possible, to put revoco under the BSD (oder GPL, LGPL) licence,
> so all the Linux-users can use it?

My bonobo does not know anything about liences. If you want to
enter something for Debian, "public domain" would be the best.

Thanks E.Toernig, this made my morning

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I'm happy I could make you laugh with my upload to mentors.
But the problem is still there - is this "ok" as a copyright for Debian? revoco is a very useful tool for MX Revolution owners, so it would be nice to have it in Debian.

Regards
Evgeni

#1 Evgeni Golov (Homepage) on 2007-04-17 13:27 (Reply)

I am not really sure wether this is a problem or not. I mean packaging public domain software is no problem, but upstream should include anotice that it is public domain. I am sorry, I have no clue, I guess you should ask on debian-legal.
Cheers
nion

#2 nion on 2007-04-17 15:44 (Reply)

I agree with the problem -- it should certainly have a license. Note that e.g. flex and bison all have special license notes for the generated output. Something like "Created by bonobo. Redistribution and use in any form, with or without modifications, is permitted." would be the easiest approach. Note that under German law it is noot possible to disclaim ownership, but you can allow anyone to use the code.

#3 Joerg Sonnenberger on 2007-04-17 18:56 (Reply)

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