Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence

[Sean Kellogg <skellogg@u.washington.edu>]

On Tuesday 07 June 2005 06:43 pm, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 06:26:46PM -0700, Sean Kellogg wrote:
> > > You are, as you say, talking about termination rights. But wouldn't
> > > those be just as much an issue here as they are with, say, the GPL?
> >
> > Oh yes, termination rights are certainly an issue with the GPL.  However,
> > you can't exercise termination rights on a work unless you control 50% of
> > the work.  I suggest that most projects that will be around in 35 years
> > are of such size that no one person will have true majority control.
>
> It's not so much projects that are actually around for 35 years.  Rather,
> if you maintain a project for, say, three or four years, I reuse large
> chunks of it in my own project, and my project outlives yours.  Decades
> later, you (or your heirs) have a change of heart, and revoke the license
> you originally granted to me for your project, which I require to use your
> code in mine.  You don't control 50% of my work, but you easily control
> 50% of the work you licensed.  If I want my work to remain free, I have
> to excise your code from it--which, decades later, probably won't be
> possible.  It's a textbook failure of the "tentacles of evil" test.

No argument from me...  but it is the system we've got here in the States and 
FOSS developers should plan accordingly, just as is expected of anyone else 
who enters into the world of copyrights.

-Sean