Preserving the global software heritage

Posted Jul 8, 2016 19:43 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Preserving the global software heritage by amarao
Parent article: Preserving the global software heritage

Copyright is inherently controversial. It's supposed to To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries—but both extremities don't work (or so it seems). If these “limited Times” are too small then apparently nobody will bother to create anything (although I'm not sure if anyone ever tested that theory). If that time is pushed to millions of years then all the “Writings and Discoveries” would eventually become unavailable for anyone who does not want to spend exorbitant sums of money.

Libraries (both physical and digital) just sit at the center of that whole dilemma…

Preserving the global software heritage

Posted Jul 14, 2016 23:37 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> Copyright is inherently controversial. It's supposed to To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries—but both extremities don't work (or so it seems).

Except that is a minority view. It's the justification used in the American Constitution, but that doesn't apply to most of the world. It's based on the Queen Anne act (can't remember the details) which was meant to provide a monopoly for printers.

And it's been shown that that "limited times" should be about 10 years - nearly all the value in almost any work will have been extracted in that ten years.

I can accept extending it for the authors, but the current system is just totally unjustifiable ...

Cheers,
Wol