© Acorn Computers Ltd

I just downloaded a few apps from your website and I see that they still specify Acorn Computers Limited as the author in the “About this program” window.

Apart from the obvious need of it needing updating, are ROOL on legal ground still stating this?

The reason I ask is because I know there is ‘another’ Acorn computer Ltd company that now exists.

I’m not at all clued up in legal status of this, so I thought I’d just ask and see if anyone does.

You’re talking about two different things – authorship vs ownership. The title of your post mentions copyright, but your post does not.

I would certainly expect Acorn to be credited with writing most of RISC OS, even though they no longer exist. Similarly, in some books, you sometimes see a notice that although the author has handed over copyright, they assert their right to be acknowledged as the writer.

Most of the source code mentions Castle as the copyright owner, where relevant. Certainly, if various messages still say “Copyright Acorn Computers”, that should be updated, but it’s not clear that that’s the case from your message.

Yes, you are absolutely right, I didn’t differentiate between the two.

In this instance, it states that Acorn Computers Ltd is both author and copyright holder.

One would assume this would need updating, especially with the new Acorn Computers Limited company that exists.

In the basic apps I have been modifying recently (CloseUp/Alarm/Maesto/PrintEdit) I have changed them to take the author string from the Messages file.

The recently added VerAwk script (which currently sets up the _Version token) could easily be extended to sustitute something else for “Acorn Computers Ltd”.

Ah, the thorny subject of copyright notices rears its ugly head again. For a definitive guide, we’d need a copyright lawyer to comment, but since that’s not going to happen, I’ll run through the situation as I understand it.

Where a work was created in a country which is a signatory to the Berne Copyright Convention (which is most of the world these days) the author of that work automatically has copyright in that work without having to mark it as such. However a common clause in an employment contract is for the employee to assign copyright in all works they create in the course of their employment to the employer. Hence, most of RISC OS was always copyright Acorn even though it actually had many individual authors (Acorn’s employees). In this respect it’s unfortunate that the standard ProgInfo dialogue confuses the concepts of authorship and copyright. Copyright is something that can be bought and sold; authorship is set in stone.

The Castle shared source licence grants you the permission to create derivative works subject to certain terms and conditions (no commercial use, changes to be made freely available to others, and so on). If a derivative work is sufficiently different, the law can grant the developer copyright in that derivative work (though this does not affect the rights of the original owner, for example to place restrictions on how the derivative work is used). The licence does not strictly speaking require copyright in derivative works to be reassigned to Castle. So now that RISC OS is being developed by people not employed by the major copyright holder, each application, module and even source file may have multiple copyright holders. However, to make things more complicated, the threshold of the amount by which you have to change the source to qualify it as a derivative work (and therefore to qualify for copyright) is loosely defined and would have to be legally tested on a case-by-case basis. Since the copyright would exist irrespective of the the inclusion of a copyright notice, it is therefore safer for additional notices not to be explicitly added, especially since under the terms of the shared source licence, that copyright cannot materially affect the way in which the derivative work is further distributed or relicensed.

The law on copyright notices is somewhat at odds with that on copyright ownership – I suspect it harks back to a time before the Berne Convention. It also varies from country to country – the© symbol isn’t recognised by all, and an “All rights reserved” suffix has no meaning in others. What you strictly are supposed to include is the word “Copyright” and the date of first publication – I believe this is significant because it determines the future date at which the work enters the public domain. Later dates are optional but have no legal significance – and they’re a chore to maintain in a source tree since they’d need updating every year, so we usually miss them out. However many people like to include them because they give at least the illusion that software is still being actively developed.

Regarding the use of the “Acorn Computers Ltd” name in copyright notices, then if they are properly accompanied by the date of first publication then it should be unambiguous which company owns it. And even without, it wouldn’t grant any rights to the other Acorn Computers Ltd. I personally would hesitate to change any existing copyright notices without taking legal advice.

BICBW, IANAL, etc.