this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2024
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All companies should be required to release their entire codebase under the GPL if the product is no longer going to be maintained by them.
That way a community of people who actually care can maintain and improve it.
I play several games that run on 20+ year old engines, long since abandoned by their original creators. The community reverse engineered the games and server infrastructure so they can still be run and enjoyed today. Same for all the folks who develop emulators and the entire ecosystem of ROM dumpers, readers, and handhelds that surround them.
Capitalism is a cancer. So amazing that, at least in certain parts of the software world, we have something better.
This is also a friendly reminder to donate to and support your favorite FOSS projects! they need all the help they can get. ❤️
I'll do ya one further: Copyright should have the same lifespan as a patent. 20 years max. No extensions, no exceptions. I'd even cosider less time than that.
If you retained the unilateral rights to copy your idea for 20 fucking years and you haven't made your healthy profit on it already in that time, tough. Your work will forcefully enter the public domain so people who were likely actually still alive when it was culturally relevant get a shake with it.
There is no reason why something created during my childhood ought to still be languishing locked up in trust of some dead man's corporation by the time I've withered away of old age and my grandkids have done the same. The severe generational lag of culture and accessible technology created by copyright in its current form is absurd.
If you want to chase your golden goose forever, keep making new iterations of it that have their own copyrights that fairly compete against everyone else's in the marketplace of ideas. Get off your laurels. Get on your toes. Keep making new, inspired things. Earn your goddamn right to continue being seen as the rightful creator to follow up what you've previously made in the past.
For big contracts between companies, this is actually done, in a way, through source code escrow. Would be nice if this was a thing for consumers as well.
They are considering it making it open source, among other options to keep the robots alive
OpenAI started as open as well. Sadly
Settle down there, that's not what all the headlines say. How will the pitchforks get used unless the headline is 100% negative?
To be fair, it's bad... I'm not arguing against that.
Awesome if that ends up happening.
While I agree in principle, a blanket enforcement seems like a great way for companies to purposely tank smaller entities just to get hold of their code/IP. Alongside this, it probably doesn't help to just release the code, when these devices will run on web services, or perhaps even proprietary tech.
In this case, it would be a great way to dissolve the company. Switch the endpoints over to a custodian project, have the servers owned and run through a community campaign, and open source the code and artifacts.
In my ideal world, IP and copyright wouldn't exist at all, but obviously that won't happen in my lifetime.
Neither would my suggestion of releasing any defunct software as GPL, sadly.
The codebase the would be a great start, even if it previously ran on proprietary tech, having the codebase at least allows engineers to pull out the proprietary hooks and rebuild them to work with something open source.
We need a right to repair but for software, sadly that also is a pipe dream in our current environment.
Companies already tank smaller entities all the time just to have less competition. I don't think OC's suggestion could accelerate this in any way. They're already going at full speed.
um,,, my favorite streamer Pirate Software says it is impossible for corporations to provide code to extend the life of anything
Why?
They sometimes use the IP of others and it can be a real headache or impossible to get permission from everyone.
This argument seems hollow, releasing source code is not an all or nothing situation. They can just release what they are allowed to, and let the community replace the missing stuff.
Releasing anything is better than releasing nothing and letting the community reverse engineer everything instead of just some third-party libraries.
But also, in a world where such a law did exist, it would naturally force every third-party to create their contracts in a way that would allow the eventual release of the source code, or lose out on the deal and subsequently, the money.
When we are talking about laws, yes you are right.
I was arguing more about developers not releasing the source code on their own, when they stopped releasing patches, or even remove the game from stores or shutdown servers, while stating that reason: "We cannot because we use third-party stuff."
No, they just do not want to. They might even think that their past games are in competition to their current games. So they do not want people to play (and improve/mod) them anymore.
Understandable