4 ms·

If even the author cannot value the product, even after the initial 10 years, the it should fall to public domain.

• bruce511 5y ago
  so, to be clear here; You're suggesting that Copyleft licenses should be _public domained_ after a short period of time, or the copyright owner should pay a tax? So, let's take say the Software Freedom Foundation. They should declare a value on the GNU Tools - and if say Microsoft is prepared to pay that value then all GNU tools should be public domain - meaning they can be used in say Windows (as closed compiled binaries?) Alternatively the FSF needs to come up with some % of value to prevent MS from using their work under a closed license? I mean, copyright works both ways right? It's equally protecting those that want to commercially profit from their work, and also those that don't want it to be used in a "non freedom" way. So, assuming most GPL authors aren't swimming in cash, this would make more-or-less all GPL'd works lose their freedoms?
  • esrauch 5y ago
    You obviously disagree but it seems very reasonable to me that 20 year old FSF code should fall into the public domain including for Microsoft or MomAndPopSoftwareCo or whoever to use. Note that they still couldn't just take the current grep or vim or whatever code and use it; copyright on later revisions isn't based on the first published moment of the same project. Instead the code has tons of changes made within the past 20 years and all of those deltas will still be covered by copyright. Microsoft could only be able to take the code of grep as it was as of 2001. I actually kind of doubt they would, but if that much time has passed and something is still useful it should belong to everyone and not just one person.