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But what I do think is they should be forced to release their source code if they no longer want to maintain it. This is a common suggestion from open source f

But what I do think is they should be forced to release their source code if they no longer want to maintain it. This is a common suggestion from open source fans but it quickly fails on practicality. What if the code includes licensed software from a third party? What about trade secrets of the developer, or information provided to them in confidence by a third party? You quickly end up back at software developers either having to maintain indefinitely or accept an onerous set of restrictions and either way the end result is that a lot of software never gets made at all. There is definitely a serious problem with having our modern dependence on software and yet accepting the very limited support that some developers have tried to get away with lately, but I don't think attempts to force the source open are likely to be the solution we need.

jedberg 5y ago
If they begin the project knowing that it will one day be open source, they can build accordingly. Make the law only apply to products released one year after the law goes into effect. > What if the code includes licensed software from a third party? The third party would be subject to the same law, or the law could be written that liability is removed. Then it's up to the third party to evaluate the risk. > What about trade secrets of the developer, That's a tradeoff they'd have to make -- reveal the trade secret or pay to maintain the software. > or information provided to them in confidence by a third party? Since the third party would be aware of the potential for the software to be open source, they would have to decide if they want to reveal that or not, or require that part to be removed before open sourcing and replaced with equivalent functionality.
- Silhouette 5y ago
  Sorry, but this just seems completely unrealistic. The commercial software development industry in any country that adopted such a law would become a toxic wasteland. Open source has always had a terrible track record of producing effective, commercially viable results, and you would be reducing the whole industry to that kind of level. Not that you could pass the laws required to make it happen without causing a major diplomatic problem anyway since it would probably violate about a million provisions of the WIPO treaties and so on.
watwut 5y ago
To be honest, the biggest problem I see is that with massive corporate projects, fixing them after original company lost interest will be too difficult and expensive.

jedberg 5y ago

If they begin the project knowing that it will one day be open source, they can build accordingly. Make the law only apply to products released one year after the law goes into effect. > What if the code includes licensed software from a third party? The third party would be subject to the same law, or the law could be written that liability is removed. Then it's up to the third party to evaluate the risk. > What about trade secrets of the developer, That's a tradeoff they'd have to make -- reveal the trade secret or pay to maintain the software. > or information provided to them in confidence by a third party? Since the third party would be aware of the potential for the software to be open source, they would have to decide if they want to reveal that or not, or require that part to be removed before open sourcing and replaced with equivalent functionality.

Silhouette 5y ago
Sorry, but this just seems completely unrealistic. The commercial software development industry in any country that adopted such a law would become a toxic wasteland. Open source has always had a terrible track record of producing effective, commercially viable results, and you would be reducing the whole industry to that kind of level. Not that you could pass the laws required to make it happen without causing a major diplomatic problem anyway since it would probably violate about a million provisions of the WIPO treaties and so on.

watwut 5y ago

To be honest, the biggest problem I see is that with massive corporate projects, fixing them after original company lost interest will be too difficult and expensive.