License

[Martin Gregorie]

The same copyright protection that would apply by default in any case.

There is no requirement that a copyright notice, or even attribution, be
provided in order for a work to be copyrighted.

Thanks for that. I thought the author had to be identified for an article
to be copyrighted - or at least for the copyright to be meaningful.

 

[Martin Gregorie]

Lots more info here:
http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/

Yes, indeed, and well worth a quick read.

However, I notice it doesn't address one point: the utility and
effectiveness of copyright for a document or source file that doesn't
contain the name of the author, e.g. the example source files distributed
with JavaMail. These don't contain the name of the author or, indeed, any
reference to Sun, so I'm left wondering how any person or organization
could prove authorship if they tried to claim a copyright violation or to
dispute a false claim of authorship.

 

[John B. Matthews]

On reviewing the thread (should I have done that several messages ago?
), I find that I'm not entirely clear about how this came up. Looking at
the quote from Arne to which you originally responded, I see that he seems
to have introduced the idea of linking without modification.

The OP clearly is modifying the code in question. But if all you and Arne
are discussing is the hypothetical situation in which some other person
simply links to the licensed code, I agree the exception would apply in
that case.

Yes, I see this, now. In responding to Arne, I drifted into a general,
hypothetical discussion of GPL exceptions that didn't apply to the OP's
proposed scenario.

If I've misunderstood the point you were trying to make, I apologize, for
the misunderstanding and for wasting so much of your time on the
question.

Not at all. I genuinely appreciate your willingness to discuss different
scenarios and alternative interpretations. Such analysis is immensely
valuable when legal consultation is (inevitably) required.

 

[Martin Gregorie]

Typically, a copyrighted work is published in some way, and the owner of
the copyright knows how it was published and can document that they in
fact were the original publisher. It's that documentation, and not the
copyright notice itself, that provides support for a copyright ownership
claim.

Yes, that's clear and is a good reason for registering copyright.

However, the FAQ also says there's no need for the copyright notice or
for registering. Would this leave you in deep doo-doo if you omitted to
do both, left out the author's name as well and then tried to have
somebody for plagiarism who'd added their own name and published it as
theirs. If they hired a lawyer I'd imagine you'd have problems, or did I
misunderstand something?