Free software
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Free software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things. Free software is generally available without charge, but can have a fee.
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Summary
Richard Stallman has stated that a shorter copyright duration could have an inadvertently negative effect on free software and the associated movement. The nature of a copyleft license is that it uses copyright law to ensure the freedom of the work; if the copyright duration were shortened this positive effect would be lessened. After the copyright on free software has expired, the work of the free software community could be used in proprietary software, but the reverse is not true as while the compiled software would come out of copyright, the proprietary source code would not be released. Furthermore, the software could have a "time bomb" so as not to work more after the allotted duration of copyright has passed. Copyright is also used by the free software community in order to defend against software patents.
Stallman has suggested three solutions to this problem: to extend the copyright duration of free software alone, giving an explicit advantage to free software to redress the balance, to extend the copyright duration of free works generally, so that free software is not the only exception, or to put the source code of proprietary software in escrow and release it after the software's copyright has expired, in order to ensure that both cases are treated equally.
Duration extension for free software
This is objected to on the basis of giving favouritism to a specific kind of works, as special cases in law tend to provide loopholes.
Proprietary source code escrow
It may be possible to extend the deposit library scheme (where publishers are required to deposit works into the British Library and five other legal deposit libraries) to include software and/or its source code.
Enforcing a source code escrow may unfairly restrict proprietary software businesses or be otherwise impractical.
Forum topics
- Protection of free software (last post on September 30th, 2009)
- PPUK and FOSS (last post on August 13th, 2009)
- Closed-Source Software and copyright terms (last post on November 18th, 2009)
Votes
No votes have been taken on this issue and none are planned.
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