Proactive future?
Proactive future?
Posted Dec 20, 2008 0:53 UTC (Sat) by mmcgrath (guest, #44906)In reply to: in this post, i rant about licensing by bcs
Parent article: in this post, i rant about licensing
What is being done to find these things in the future?
Posted Dec 20, 2008 0:57 UTC (Sat)
by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Dec 20, 2008 1:04 UTC (Sat)
by mmcgrath (guest, #44906)
[Link] (4 responses)
If it truly is just "unresponsive upstream" problems. Who's responsible for abandoned code? Legally I mean.
Posted Dec 20, 2008 3:21 UTC (Sat)
by spot (guest, #15640)
[Link] (3 responses)
Who's responsible for abandoned code? The copyright holder is. Of course, they aren't required to do anything with it, all the rights you get are what the copyright holder grants you, and nothing more.
Lets say that I, Tom Callaway, write some code with a craptastic license, then disappear. Since I'm a US Citizen, the code that I hold copyright on is available only under terms that I make available (aka, my lame license) for a duration period of "life of the author plus 70 years". Assuming I live to the ripe old age of 95 (and that no further copyright extensions occur during that period, which is rather unlikely given that the US government does it every 20 years or so), then the code would pass into the public domain in 2145.
In the case of afio, it is considered a "work of corporate authorship". In the US, that means the copyright term is "120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever endpoint is earlier." So, again, barring a likely copyright extension, the afio code will pass into the public domain in 2080. Not as bad as 2145, but I really hope our future ape overlords don't need afio in 2080.
That's the only recourse you've got. Convince the copyright holder to change the terms (or permit use under different terms) or wait for it to pass into the public domain. It's worse when the copyright holder is deceased (9wm, for example). We can't get new terms, we just get to wait ~70 years.
Posted Dec 20, 2008 10:07 UTC (Sat)
by pebolle (guest, #35204)
[Link] (2 responses)
Aren't the heirs (then presumably copyright holders - or at least holders of most rights associated with the works of the deceased) allowed to do the things any holder of copyrighted works is allowed to do (e.g. transfer top a third party or relicense)?
Or are you referring to practical problems: the number of heirs may be large; the heirs could have conflicting opinions on the way the should handle their (collective) rights; the heirs may be difficult to track down, etc.?
Posted Dec 20, 2008 14:38 UTC (Sat)
by spot (guest, #15640)
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Posted Dec 22, 2008 21:20 UTC (Mon)
by lambda (subscriber, #40735)
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This mess is part of why I feel like some kind of requirement to make even a token effort to renew a
Downstream? That usually refers to distros, and Tom's writing on behalf of Fedora, a distro. Did you mean upstream? For old code, often there is no active upstream.
Proactive future?
Proactive future?
Proactive future?
Proactive future?
> can't get new terms, we just get to wait ~70 years.
Proactive future?
Proactive future?
enough to do something about it. Tracking down who should have inherited something can be quite
difficult.
copyright after 10 or 20 years would be good. That would mean that there could be a database of
everything that is under copyright and more than 10 or 20 years old, and it would be a lot easier to
track down whoever owned the work.