[License-discuss] ""All rights reserved" in open source licenses

[Eitan Adler]

On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 11:54 PM, John Cowan <cowan at mercury.ccil.org> wrote:
> Eitan Adler scripsit:
>
>> Does anyone know what the phrase "All rights reserved" means in the
>> BSD license http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause and
>> http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause ?
>>
>> I don't understand what value the phrase adds and it seems to
>> contradict the remainder of the license.
>
> It adds no value whatsoever and has no legal meaning.  It was required
> under the 1910 Buenos Aires copyright convention, but all members of
> that are now members of the Berne Convention, which forbids the lack of
> legal formalities to affect the establishment of a copyright.  Feel free
> to strike it out of any license you are reusing.
>
> Furthermore, it does not override the rights explicitly granted: it merely
> means that rights not granted are reserved, which is already true under
> Berne and all national copyright laws.


This is *exactly* what I thought but I wanted the confirmation from
other people on this list.

Thanks!

-- 
Eitan Adler