Preserving the global software heritage

Posted Jul 14, 2016 23:37 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: Preserving the global software heritage by khim
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).

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