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I wish there was a mandate that companies had to register sourcecode, e.g. with the Library of Congress, so that it could be released as Public Domain after a c
by brylie 6y ago
I wish there was a mandate that companies had to register sourcecode, e.g. with the Library of Congress, so that it could be released as Public Domain after a couple of decades. We are losing quite a lot of our software heritage when companies bury projects like WordPerfect or milk older games for a few more bucks. We could have a thriving, open-source ecosystem around the sometimes excellent software that is currently locked away.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y agoWe've decided 20 years is long enough for drug patents, and in my opinion, it should be good enough for almost all intellectual property, really. Create something new? Great! You're officially granted a monopoly on that thing for 2 decades - plenty of time to monetize it, and use the money to create some other new things. If you can't figure out a way to monetize it in that timeframe, then we'll allow others to compete with you and take a crack at it.
- vanderZwan 6y agoGiven that Disney made its fortune by adapting public domain stories and then abusing the copyright protection of their adaptation of these stories, I think there are more loopholes to patch than just the expiration date.
- ilnmtlbnm 6y agoTake a look at : https://www.softwareheritage.org/ https://www.softwareheritage.org/ They've made it their mission to collect and preserve source code.
- brylie 6y agoVery cool! I couldn't find a trove where I could browse by category or other metadata, although I did find the search interface. Is there a categorised trove?