No rights reserved

[David Johnson]

On Saturday 12 May 2001 17:12, David Croft wrote:

> As even these suggestions seem a bit too wordy for me, I am considering
> simply switching the word "All" to "No" in the standard copyright
> statement: "Copyright 2001 David Wallace Croft.  No rights reserved."
>
> I believe that this statement would effectively surrender all exclusive
> rights reserved to the copyright holder under copyright law.  Any
> comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

No, you are still retaining the copyright, as you explicitely state :-) And I 
do not believe that "No rights reserved" is an appropriate legal statement. 

As I understand it,  in order to place something in the Public Domain, you 
must legally sign away your right to the work, in a process that involves 
paper documents and signatures. This is too much trouble for the average 
developer, so it is rarely (if at all) done.

But you can do the next best thing. Use the BSD, MIT or similar license. And 
if even those are too wordy, then something on the order of "All persons are 
permitted to use, copy, modify and distribute this work without restriction" 
should be brief enough.

-- 
David Johnson
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