SIMSON SAYS: Copyright and wrongs

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Thus spoke Kragen Sitaker:

> Perhaps an easier solution: reduce the term of software copyright to
> five years or so.  Releasing source code would be nice, but you can't
> have everything, right?  :)

This might have other negative effects.  What if someone makes something
GPL'ed, looses the copyright after 5 years, the code reverts to the public
domain, and then someone else builds a new proprietary product based on it,
which we have to wait 5 years to get in the public domain.
 
> Perhaps it would be worthwhile to require the release of source code to
> some government escrow agency in order to grant copyright protection.

Something like this would still have the problems I describe above, I think.

> A more radical solution: eliminate software copyright altogether.  It
> would seem that Red Hat Software and Cygnus Solutions have demonstrated
> that software copyright is not necessary to stimulate authorship of
> software.

Don't forget that Cygnus sells many proprietary software products now.

Also, elimination of software copyright may make it easier for folks to
distribute binary-only versions of things (no source) since nothing is
actually *requiring* them to release the source.

> (I know these proposals have no chance in hell of getting through the
> current legislature, but they are certainly worthy proposals.)

I am not sure.
 
> It seems to me that applying book-style copyright on software naturally
> produces destructive monopolies like Microsoft, because of some ways
> books are different from software.

However, I would argue that book copyrights are outdated and a "bad bargain"
as RMS says in today's modern age of everyone having their own printing
press.

-- 
      Bradley M. Kuhn   |     bkuhn@ebb.org    |   http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn