Who gave the license?

[UnkindPartition]

Hi,

Thanks a lot for your work — this looks like a very interesting read.

However, I was startled to see the indication of the CC license. IANAL, but to my knowledge, in most jurisdictions the copyright for the letters belongs to their authors (Dijkstra and Backus) and their heirs, typically for 50 to 70 years since the death of the authors. Unless you managed to get the current rights holders grant this license, there is no license and indicating otherwise is misleading.

[jiahao]

I had originally intended the CC license to pertain only to the images scans and transcripts. However, IANAL and I'm not entirely sure what the copyright status of these are. My current operating assumption is fair use and public interest, being careful to credit the Library of Congress and sources where possible. However, I have no interest in any commercial use of this work, nor will be spending any significant time defending my interpretation of the lawm should it come to that.

[UnkindPartition]

Copyright in most countries (definitely in the US) protects original creative expression, not any kind of information or work. So scans themselves are protected only to the extent their contents is.

All this is to say, a safer/less confusing thing to do is probably to remove mentions of the license.