On 2013-02-20 22:01, "Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠)" wrote:
On 2013-02-20 21:55, "Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠)" wrote:
If analysis shows that this kind of escrow would give enough benefits, that the risk of the source code being useless for reproducing the binaries is too great, then I can imagine a stronger model:
That is, if best-effort escrow would *not* give enough benefits.
Source code is published, but with all rights reserved, except the right to use the source to produce a working binary and verify its function.
... which would mean that you could, as a beneficiary who finds the published source useless, force them to improve the published source even before the second five-year term is over, or prove that the published source can indeed produce a working and equivalent binary.
Come to think of it, a similar mechanism could be employed against useless overbroad patents as well. If the information contained in the patent cannot be used to reproduce anything useful, the patent should be invalidated, as the original quid-pro-quo of disclosure for monopoly is then not upheld.