Copyleft-next and the kernel

Copyleft-next and the kernel

I don't think there's much practical difference between the second and third option. The logical interpretation of the license is that the 15 year wait for code to be available starts as soon as it's released, and re-releasing it doesn't somehow reset the waiting time*. In that case, you can always go back to the earliest release that has the code you want to copy as a basis for copying it. If the license applies to the software as a whole, it would also apply to each individual part, so you would be able to take whatever snippet you want. Similarly, if the license applies to each part, it should also apply to the whole.

As a practical matter, I think this kind of thing has real dangers that would make me leery of reusing the code from a project under this license. Yes, you're in no trouble if you copy the code verbatim. But what happens if there's a bug in the code you copied, and your patch for the bug happens to be the same as the way the original project fixed it and that code is still under copyleft? Your code is now a duplicate of copylefted code, and it doesn't matter legally if you arrived at the solution independently.

*IANAL, but I think that trying to reset the clock this way would be legally dicey even if that's what the license purported to do.

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