3 ms·

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

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.

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.