

 Pirate Party's copyright reform cannon could sink copyleft - jauco
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/pirate-partys-copyright-reform-cannon-could-sink-copyleft.ars

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tocomment
I would argue 5 years is most of a software useful lifetime. (for most
software.) And open source software changes so fast, would you really if a
company uses a 5 year old version of your code with doing copyleft stuff?
They'd still have an incentive to use a newer version and follow your license.

Plus the benefits gained in other fields by a five year limit (think research
papers, movies, music) would far outweigh anything lost to the software field.

~~~
DarkShikari
Agreed.

Of what use would be a 5 year old version of Firefox? It would be covered in
security holes and missing many modern features.

Of what use would be a 5 year old version of the Linux kernel? It would have
root exploits all over the place and be missing support for lots of modern
hardware.

Of what use would be a 5 year old version of mplayer? It wouldn't even be able
to play Youtube videos.

~~~
req2
Consumer software might upgrade rapidly, but business software would probably
take a hit. At $10,000 a license per year times multiple licenses, a lot of
business software vendors might find themselves losing clients after five
years.

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christopherolah
I completely disagree.

While the GPL and other FOSS licenses would loose power after copyright runs
out (int this case, 5 years), so would propreitary licenses.

Now, it might seem that this is an unfair situation proprietary software holds
the advantage, after all they can grab our source code and we can't get
theirs? Right? Wrong. Name a major piece of software for which the source
isn't leaked... And the Pirate Party could add a law requiring that source
code be released after copyright expires for distributed works.

This means that the field is always even for all developers open or not.
(Well, not quite even, there is a five year difference...) but as long as the
FOSS movement is about creating good free software (as apposed to annihilating
proprietary software) this doesn't matter.

~~~
gojomo
"I completely disagree."

Did you read the article? You are completely _agreeing_ with RMS, who
recommends that an extra proviso should be added requiring proprietary source
disclosure at 5 years.

~~~
christopherolah
I was disagreeing with the statement that `` Pirate Party's copyright reform
cannon could sink copyleft.'' I only skimmed through the article and missed
that part. (In part because I'm irritated by the fact that I've seen this idea
iterated several times without ever considering this option.)

In short, my bad...

~~~
gojomo
Never trust a social-news-site headline. :)

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gojomo
Misled by the headline, I thought copylefters might have foundational
objections with the short copyright terms affecting copyleft. Rather, RMS just
wants a tweak to ensure proprietary source, and not just binaries, become
available at the end of 5 years.

I think in practice, the point is minor. If arbitrary reverse-engineering and
distribution of patched copies is allowed after 5 years, disassembly tools
will get really good, really fast. The meatiest bits of public-domain but
source-hidden binaries will quickly get source-equivalent coverage; creating
such would be a fun/easy/legal exercise for students and hobbyists.

