On Tue, 2005-11-22 at 10:27 -0600, Richard Atcheson wrote:
On Tuesday 22 November 2005 08:06 am, John Coldrick wrote:
AFAIK, you can't currently force an author to make their work public, and should that be true that's all that matters right now.
Did you ever hear of expiration of copyright? Use to be short term now is life of author +70 yrs or so. Created by Congress and can be uncreated if necessary. What the king giveth he can take away anytime he wants.
Problem is the Congress is owned by the big (wealthy) boys so we're screwed!
I was thinking about this yesterday. It seems equitable that if a company folds, that after a given time (say two years) that it's intellectual property isn't purchased and maintained, that said property would revert to the public domain, which would allow those using the software to benefit, and those supporting the software to benefit.