The origianl Berkeley Software Distributions were made in the 1980's
and 1990's. At that time, the Buenos Ares Convention of 1910 was in
force in most of the countries in the Americas. It required an
affirmative statement of rights reservation, so the phrase 'All Rights
Reserved' was born. The Regents included this phrase in their
copyright notices to invoke this treaty to ensure maximal copyright
coverage.
Then, in the 1990's there was a push to get Latin America to ratify
the Berne Convention on copyrights which prohibited countries from
requiring the affirmative statements to reserve the rights. When
Nicaragua ratified in 2000, the Buenos Ares Convention of 1910 was
effectively repealed. This made all the 'All Rights Reserved' phrases
obsolete and legal deadweight most of the time, and certainly in the
cases removed here.
Since it's no longer required, and is in fact meaningless, core has
decided to dropped it from the project's collection copyright and
sample templates. It encourages other rights holders to do the same
after consultation with their legal department.
More see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buenos_Aires_Convention for
more information.
Approved by: core@