[copyleft-next] Limited-term copyleft

Theodore Ts'o tytso at mit.edu
Thu Feb 14 14:39:15 UTC 2013


On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 01:29:59AM -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:
> > 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? 
> 
> I was hoping Ted Ts'o might chime in. :) 

Because of the rapid pace of hardware change, it's highly unlikely
that Linux from ten years ago would be particularly interesting for
most people.  This might be less true of mature, more slowly moving
projects, that don't have hardware dependencies, such as GNU Emacs,
however.

One nice thing about having a sunset clause like this is that it makes
it easier to relicense code, since you only need to try to
find/contact developers who have contributed to the project in the
last ten years.

						- Ted


More information about the copyleft-next mailing list