Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!star.cs.vu.nl!ast
From: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: is the shell copyrighted?
Message-ID: <3739@ast.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 18 Oct 89 11:21:09 GMT
References: <091689A6859@syntel.mn.org>
Reply-To: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam
Lines: 19

In article <091689A6859@syntel.mn.org> dal@syntel.mn.org (Dale Schumacher) writes:
>I had heard that the U.S. had finally joined the Berne Convention, so this
>will apply to all future unmarked U.S. works as well.  You will need to
>explicitly disclaim the copyright to place it into the public domain.

Several people have commented on this.  Apparently the U.S. changed its own
copyright law to be substantially in conformance with the Berne Convention.
This has implications for comp.os.minix.  If you post a program to the group
and intend for it to be public domain, please include a message near the
top to the effect:
    The author of this work, <name of author> hereby places it into the
    public domain.

If you really want to keep the copyright, it might be best to put a copyright
notice in it, even though that is not required any more.  If you do that, I
probably will only be able to use it if you sign a legal form devised by
P-H's lawyers in which you sign away your life.

Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)