I had separately come to the conclusion some years ago that what I privately termed a "lag-license" (eventually goes to open source) is probably the right solut

I had separately come to the conclusion some years ago that what I privately termed a "lag-license" (eventually goes to open source) is probably the right solution. I thought maybe four years. To my mind, the essential problem is that code "copyrights" (copyright is really for artistic value) ought to have been for maybe four years, not more than a century, to begin with. The government hasn't done this (AOC, are you listening?) so business is fumbling toward the optimal solution, slowly. But I had been thinking of a delayed release with a very permissive license such as MIT (duplicating the change in law I'd like to see.) But in that case, I wondered, should one have a clause that insists that derived works also go into the public domain after a lag? I.E. be lagged licensed as well. Only that creates the same situation as a law providing four years of copyright protection. Releasing to Apace 2.0, as you do, addresses that, but might scare off some businesses. Re release to MIT, I can see allowing code to be put in Escrow (Trust in other legal systems) rather than exposed immediately. I do also wonder however if there's a case to allow companies to hold onto code that reveals, or reveals information about, trade secrets. Which likely doesn't apply in your case. But likely such information could be finagled into a data file rather than code.