🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <6vtoa5$sbm$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca>,
Bill Unruh <unruh@physics.ubc.ca> wrote:
>coniserably. I do not believe that software source has the same
>"timelessness" as say a novel or a piece of music. Ie, after some short
>period of time (I hae suggested 5 years, but clearly this figure does
>not arise from any deep analysis.-- It would be interesting to know why
>the absordly long periods for traditional copyrights got decided on.),
>the copyright would lapse and the material would go into the public
>domain.

I think a reasonable compromise would be to make the period of protection
dependent on whether source code was released or not. Make the binary
enter the public domain after one year if no source code is provided
(provided = offered for sale at no more than the same price as the
binary). Protect the binary for 10 years if source is provided; give 25
years of protection to the source code. The source code could be withheld
for up to the one-year time limit with no penalty. Software is more a
"useful" thing than a "creative" thing, as far as protection ought to
go, and as such, protection should be more in line with the length of
patents than literature or music.