On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 10:40 PM, Richard Fontana fontana@sharpeleven.org wrote:
Does anyone think the idea of a limited-term copyleft -- particularly given that copyleft-next is a software-oriented license -- is a good/bad idea?
I'm assuming what you mean to happen after the limited term is that there is some effort to have the work enter a quasi-public domain status. The Founders Copyright has a licensing vehicle that it uses to mimic the public domain -- did you have something similar in mind?
I guess it depends on how confident you feel that a public domain commitment will be unproblematic. It will also mean that the copyleft goal is subverted with what might turn out to be fairly important software. Assuming you set a 30 year term, would it be ok for the early parts of Linux to enter the public domain in 10 years? Which brings up practical problems; it's active code that has creation dates spread over 20 years. Would you have to figure out what drops and what doesn't (which I suppose is an existing problem anyway, but one we'll confront much later)?
Perhaps you can elaborate more on why in your $DAYJOB situation the license made your task more difficult?
Pam