This message is about copyright issues for freely distributed software and it contains a new copyright notice that has been approved by the University. If you don't care about these issues you need read no further. As most of you probably know, there are many avenues open to us as researchers for distributing our software. Two of the most commonly used are: 1. Copyright your software in the name of the Regents of U.C. with all rights reserved and work with the Office of Technology and Licensing (directed by Bill Hoskins) to distribute the software. OTL will license the software to research organizations for a distribution charge only, but will demand a royalty-bearing license from anyone using the software for profit. In any case, OTL will restrict the redistribution of software by requiring licenses of all users. Several of our faculty have worked with OTL and been happy with the results. 2. A more common approach is to make software freely available without any restrictions whatsoever. I've been doing this with all my software for many years and have been delighted with the resulting wide distribution that has occurred. The department also has many other success stories that resulted from freely-distributed software, such as SPICE, Ingres, and BSD Unix (although until recently AT&T has exercised some control over the redistribution of BSD). There are many ways to distribute free software, such as placing it on server machines where it can be retrieved electronically via public FTP, or using the services of the ILP Software Distribution Office. Bill Hoskins has affirmed the right of faculty to distribute software in this way, although he prefers to have an opportunity to discuss the licensing approach with faculty first. One question that people often ask about free software is whether to copyright the software and, if so, how. The best approach is to place copyright notices on the software so that ownership is clear and no-one else can claim ownership of our software, and then to add a disclaimer to the copyright notice that allows arbitrary use and redistribution. I've recently reached an agreement on the wording for such a notice with Mary MacDonald of the Office of the General Counsel and Bill Hoskins. We believe that this wording achieves our goal of wide and unrestricted distribution while protecting the University from liability. The rest of this notice contains the exact text of the notice, followed by some explanatory comments. Wording for the copyright notice: --------------------------------- Copyright (c) 1992 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose, without fee, and without written agreement is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and the following two paragraphs appear in all copies of this software. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BE LIABLE TO ANY PARTY FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE AND ITS DOCUMENTATION, EVEN IF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE SOFTWARE PROVIDED HEREUNDER IS ON AN "AS IS" BASIS, AND THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA HAS NO OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE MAINTENANCE, SUPPORT, UPDATES, ENHANCEMENTS, OR MODIFICATIONS. Comments on the notice: ----------------------- 1. Obviously, the software must not have any conflicting ownership claims if you are to copyright it for the Regents of U.C. If any of it was developed by people outside of U.C., or if it was derived from software created outside U.C., then you need to be careful to get permission from the original authors before copyrighting it in for the Regents of U.C. I don't know much about the issues related to this. 2. This notice is intended to be included at the beginning of each file of source code for the software (e.g. each ".c" or ".h" file). Having it appear on the computer screen when the software runs is also desirable, but it looks bureaucratic and threatening at best and in many applications it isn't practical to display the notice every time the software is run. 3. The official copyright sign is preferable to "(c)" in the first line, but for most of us it isn't practical. 4. The year "1992" should be replaced by whatever year the software first became available, and additional years should be added (e.g. "1989, 1991, 1992") for later modified versions. 5. The last two paragraphs must be in capital letters to conform with the requirements of the Uniform Commercial Code. 6. If you have the above language in your software, there should be no need for a company desiring to use the software to obtain any other written confirmation from the University. My understanding is that they can still do so if they wish, but my experience is that OTL is pretty slow in handling such requests. 7. If you don't like having all the above wording in every source file, you can place the full text of the copyright notice in a separate file that is always distributed with your software (e.g. put it in a file "copyright.h" that's included by all the source files). Then the last three paragraphs can be replaced with the following wording in the individual source files: "See [insert proper technical description of where the language first appears] for copyright notice and limitation of liability an disclaimer of warranty provisions." 7. To protect a copyrighted work for the long term (i.e. to prevent copyright infringement), it must be registered with the U.S. Copyright Office within five years of its first publication. If you don't do this then the work effectively enters the public domain. Mary MacDonald says that there's not much point in registering software with the above copyright notice on it, since it's effectively in the public domain anyway. However, if you think you might eventually want to restrict the software, then it should be registered. If you have any questions or concerns about these copyright issues, please send them to me. If I can't answer them myself I'll refer them on to Mary MacDonald. Personally, I think that free software distributions are a great way to disseminate results and influence the computer science community; I strongly encourage other faculty to adopt this approach and use the above copyright notice to do it in a legally correct way.