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

[John Cowan]

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.

-- 
Principles.  You can't say A is         John Cowan <cowan at ccil.org>
made of B or vice versa.  All mass      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
is interaction.  --Richard Feynman