[copyleft-next] Limited-term copyleft

"Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠)" copyleft-next at clacke.user.lysator.liu.se
Thu Feb 14 04:40:28 UTC 2013


On 2013-02-14 12:24, Francois Marier wrote:
 > On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 4:40 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 really like the idea. It's an elegant hack on the ever-increasing
 > copyright term. It would also put a bound on the amount of work
 > involved in relicensing old pieces of code with lots of unreachable
 > contributors.

Exactly. It is an upper bound on the consequences of a mistaken 
licensing choice. Unless of course that licensing choice were a 
permissive license. :-)

 >> If anyone thinks it's a good idea, what would be a good copyleft
 >> duration? 15, 20, 25 years?
 >
 > Are there examples of 20 year-old copyleft code that would be useful
 > today as it was published 20 years ago? In other words, in 5 years,
 > could someone fork the 1998 Linux kernel and do something that would
 > threaten the GPL project in any way?

I find it unlikely that the 2003 Linux Kernel would be a threat to the 
mainline. Useful, yes. Possibly even commercially viable. But not for 
the same uses as the mainline.

OTOH, people are still running Windows XP, which is around 10 years old. 
OTOOH, the version people are actually using is SP4, which is just under 
5 years old.

-- 
    /c


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