[Erwin]

Originally Posted by tamarian

That did not stand in courts in regards to source code. Case in point is the famouse Berkly University vs. AT&T (or whoever represented AT&T).

Since then, source code copyright headers became a standard practice and a significant part of source code files. Just like vB's source code, you always see the copyright stated clearly in the headers, even thought there's a separate license agreement.

So for those who do not want to mess with lawsuits, spend a couple seconds to cut and past your copyright notice into your source code headers, and don't assume anything.

That case has nothing to do with this issue.

In that case (and this is my understanding of it) AT&T was distributing an open source Unix piece of code (?OpenBSD). Berkeley copied and used it but did not include the copyright notice that indicated that AT&T wrote part of it. The court stated that Berkeley must include the AT&T copyright notice in the files.

Scripts released here however cannot be assumed to be open sourced just because no copyright notice is present. The case basically states that open source code, althought free, still retains copyright of the author and the notice should remain.

Mind you, I could be wrong in my interpretation. Disclaimer: as per my previous post - this is not legal advice.