[copyleft-next] Limited-term copyleft

Angelos Oikonomopoulos a.oikonomopoulos at vu.nl
Sat Feb 16 15:19:46 UTC 2013


On 16/02/2013 06:41 πμ, "Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠)" wrote:
> On 2013-02-16 10:38, Richard Fontana wrote:
>> On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 06:53:51AM +0100, Kuno Woudt wrote:
>>> On 02/14/2013 04:40 AM, Richard Fontana wrote:
> 
>>>> The idea would be to have the copyleft terms disappear after some
>>>> limited period far short of the statutory copyright term.
>>>
>>> The only reason I can see for wanting this is to deal with copyleft
>>> license compatibility issues.  Which in my experience are not enough
>>> of a problem to weaken the copyleft nature of the work in this way.
>>
>> Out of curiosity: If you were writing a new copyright statute to cover
>> software, how long would you make the duration of copyright?
> 
> Five, with the ability to extend with five more if registered and source
> code placed in escrow for the public upon expiration.

How would source code escrow work? The only setup I can think of
involves you shipping a full (compiler and all) build system along with
the source, them building the binary for you and you only being allowed
to distribute the binaries that they have built. Doesn't sound very
practical (or trustworthy). Maybe you had something else in mind?

Angelos


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