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I am not familiar with the proposal to require a periodic renewal fee, but given that FSF's GPL is based on copyright, wouldn't that cause much of the source co
by wolpoli 4y ago
I am not familiar with the proposal to require a periodic renewal fee, but given that FSF's GPL is based on copyright, wouldn't that cause much of the source code to go free, thus nullifying the GPL?
- teddyh 4y agoMaybe, but if source code was free, we wouldn’t need the GPL.
- elzbardico 4y agoThe GPL goal is to avoid commercial interests to restrict the freedom of the code you released to be free. Without the GPL, IBM could have taken GNU/Linux, added a lot of proprietary code to it, and released a new OS in the late 90s to compete with windows, but without giving their users the freedoms they have assured with GPL code. If your code could be appropriated like that by other entities, fewer people would botter with coding open source without monetary compensation.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- teddyh 4y agoYes; of course. Sorry, I was thinking of the hypothetical scenario in which copyright was abolished.
- Asooka 4y agoEvery push to the repo will create a new derivative work and reset the clock. If you don't pay, then your ten years old code will enter the public domain, but I would gladly agree to let anyone do whatever they want with my ten years old code if it meant better copyright laws.
- wolpoli 4y agoSo it isn't as bleak as I thought. Forking 10 years old code would not be desirable in most cases.