[copyleft-next] Limited-term copyleft

Pamela Chestek pchestek at gmail.com
Thu Feb 14 04:00:39 UTC 2013


On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 10:40 PM, Richard Fontana
<fontana at 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


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