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Legal reforms are unlikely, but there have been some voluntary efforts. Creative Commons used to have a "Founders' Copyright" [0] program that emulates the ori

Legal reforms are unlikely, but there have been some voluntary efforts. Creative Commons used to have a "Founders' Copyright" [0] program that emulates the original U.S Copyright system. You enter a contract and delegate your copyright to CC, CC adds your work to a maintained list. After 14 years (or 28 years if renewed), CC grants permissions to allow unrestricted uses of your work by others. Tim O'Reilly was a prominent supporter, a few O'Reilly books were supposed to be published under this program [1]. Unfortunately, this program is no longer active. I'm not sure why, but I guess it was due to maintenance cost. The new experimental Copyleft Next License [2] also includes a Sunset Clause. It's a strong copyleft license, but 20 years after the initial publication of a work, the copyleft requirements no longer apply, it automatically degenerates to a MIT-style license. I like the idea - If nobody cares about a long-obsolete version of a copylefted program, you may as well to maximize its remaining value by allowing unlimited uses (as long as new code is still being written, the copyleft of the current version remains in effect). Perhaps not good for all programs, but suitable for many. AFAIK, a general license suitable for all works doesn't exist yet. But it should be easy to write one, for example... > Copyright (C) 2021 segfaultbuserr. All rights reserved. An irrevocable License is granted hereby: 20 years after the initial publication of this Work, you may reuse the Work in accordance to the conditions of CC-0 in Appendix. Meanwhile, you may not use, distribute or modify the Work without the explicit permission from the author. > Appendix: [CC-0 text] The proprietary license used before expiration can also be replaced with any other licenses. [0] https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Founders_Copyright https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Founders_Copyright [1] It's also unclear whether anything has ever been actually published under Founders' Copyright by O'Reilly. The website says, "we're applying to hundreds of out-of-print and current titles, pending author approval." But did any author approve it? [2] https://github.com/copyleft-next/copyleft-next https://github.com/copyleft-next/copyleft-next

vmilner 6y ago
The o’reilly GNU make book was released under the GNU free doc license.
mxcrossb 6y ago
How does it work now with copyleft licenses? If I gpl my code, does that no longer apply after the same number of years as a copyrighted work? How does the law handle a continually evolving code base?
- incompatible 6y ago
  The copyright would expire as for any other work, but it's of hypothetical interest given the length of copyright terms. Once the copyright expires, anybody could use the code however they liked, without bothering with GPL requirements.
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  > How does it work now with copyleft licenses? If I gpl my code, does that no longer apply after the same number of years as a copyrighted work? Copyleft is implemented using the copyright system, so it's the same as any other copyrighted works: lifetime + 70 years, so 100+ years. It's practically forever for computer programs - computers in our current forms won't even exist at the point of copyright expiration. In my opinion, regardless of how a copyrighted work is licensed (copyleft or proprietary), it's counterproductive and harmful to innovation. I consider that ~20 years is a more suitable duration. The situation is absurd that the BIOS of the original IBM PC, or Commodore 64's ROM, and all other computer software from a similar era are still copyrighted, it can be a serious problem in the retrocomputing scene since redistributing them is illegal. Even for a copylefted project I believe it's harmful: if today we cannot make GPLv2 be compatible with GPLv3 or GFDL, we certainly cannot make it to be compatible with GPLv8 in the future. For example, Linux kernel contains a large number of algorithm and data structure implementations that are efficient and clean, but they often cannot be used even by GPL'd projects because Linux is GPLv2-only, what a pity. Also, the point of copyleft is to prevent re-privatization. But if my program will become obsolete to the point where it's too worthless for anyone to re-privatize, I'd be happy to let others to copy some still-useful code snippets like a linked-list implementation under a permissive license. > How does the law handle a continually evolving code base? Copyright of the code in old versions will expire, copyright of the code in new versions remain in effect, thus, the ongoing project as a whole remains copyrighted. Thought experiment: Foo v1.0's copyright has expired, you pick up the project and use the public domain code as the basis to develop Foo v2.0 and release it under GPL. Now, if you inspect the project line-by-line, the existing lines are still under the public domain, but your new lines are GPL'd. As a result, Foo v2.0 as a whole, is a GPL'd project. Any derivative works and forks based on Foo v2.0 are GPL'd as well. But others are free to use code that already exists in Foo v1.0. The situation is similar to a change of license by the copyright owner. Old version = old license. New version = new license.

vmilner 6y ago

The o’reilly GNU make book was released under the GNU free doc license.

mxcrossb 6y ago

How does it work now with copyleft licenses? If I gpl my code, does that no longer apply after the same number of years as a copyrighted work? How does the law handle a continually evolving code base?

incompatible 6y ago
The copyright would expire as for any other work, but it's of hypothetical interest given the length of copyright terms. Once the copyright expires, anybody could use the code however they liked, without bothering with GPL requirements.
segfaultbuserr 6y ago
> How does it work now with copyleft licenses? If I gpl my code, does that no longer apply after the same number of years as a copyrighted work? Copyleft is implemented using the copyright system, so it's the same as any other copyrighted works: lifetime + 70 years, so 100+ years. It's practically forever for computer programs - computers in our current forms won't even exist at the point of copyright expiration. In my opinion, regardless of how a copyrighted work is licensed (copyleft or proprietary), it's counterproductive and harmful to innovation. I consider that ~20 years is a more suitable duration. The situation is absurd that the BIOS of the original IBM PC, or Commodore 64's ROM, and all other computer software from a similar era are still copyrighted, it can be a serious problem in the retrocomputing scene since redistributing them is illegal. Even for a copylefted project I believe it's harmful: if today we cannot make GPLv2 be compatible with GPLv3 or GFDL, we certainly cannot make it to be compatible with GPLv8 in the future. For example, Linux kernel contains a large number of algorithm and data structure implementations that are efficient and clean, but they often cannot be used even by GPL'd projects because Linux is GPLv2-only, what a pity. Also, the point of copyleft is to prevent re-privatization. But if my program will become obsolete to the point where it's too worthless for anyone to re-privatize, I'd be happy to let others to copy some still-useful code snippets like a linked-list implementation under a permissive license. > How does the law handle a continually evolving code base? Copyright of the code in old versions will expire, copyright of the code in new versions remain in effect, thus, the ongoing project as a whole remains copyrighted. Thought experiment: Foo v1.0's copyright has expired, you pick up the project and use the public domain code as the basis to develop Foo v2.0 and release it under GPL. Now, if you inspect the project line-by-line, the existing lines are still under the public domain, but your new lines are GPL'd. As a result, Foo v2.0 as a whole, is a GPL'd project. Any derivative works and forks based on Foo v2.0 are GPL'd as well. But others are free to use code that already exists in Foo v1.0. The situation is similar to a change of license by the copyright owner. Old version = old license. New version = new license.