Re: New 'Public Domain' Licence

["Michael K. Edwards" <m.k.edwards@gmail.com>]

On 6/7/05, Glenn Maynard <glenn@zewt.org> wrote:
> 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.

This whole line of argument is a canard based on a failure to research
the meaning of "authorship" under US law.  See Aalmuhammed v. Lee (
http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/202_F3d_1227.htm ), and
observe that the 17 USC 203 termination right is reserved to _authors_
and their heirs, not contributors of any quantum of expression that
might by itself be copyrightable.

Cheers,
- Michael