LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <akenning@dog.topology.org>
  To  : David Newall <davidn@rebel.net.au>
  Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 17:52:01 +1030

Re: Werner Icking bicycle accident

On Wed, Feb 14, 2001 at 05:24:53PM +1030, David Newall wrote:
> > what happens to copyright etc. when an author dies.
> 
> Copyright survises the author for a period of between ten and fifty
> years, depending on the type of copyright and the country, after which
> the material is in the public domain.  The estate enjoys the benefits
> of the copyright for that period of time.

Yes, but what does it really mean in practice?

Suppose linus is eaten by a shark - does that mean that
anyone who wants to modify the files with his copyright
on it must talk to his heirs for the next 10 to 50 years?

I'm not familiar enough with the GPL to know whether
this means that any individual may then fork their own
version of the software, or whether there is still a role for
the heirs.

Software is not like audio CDs and novels, which are essentially
_fixed_ works which earn money through replication.
Software must constantly change.
Copyright law was not written
to take account of this continuous-change aspect of software.

This is where it becomes very important to distinguish
between a modified work and a derived work.

Presumably the copyright would still apply to a modified
work, because that would be like a book with spelling
errors corrected or a few footnotes added, or like a
re-mix of an audio CD.
But derived work might be less clear.

The concept of "benefits" maybe does not apply to
open source software, since the main benefit might only
be fame or something.

It seems like copyright confers:
1.	The right to receive moneys earned from the work.
2.	The right to control the work artistically.

But (1) does not apply to free software, and (2) does not
apply if the artist is dead.

That's why I'm asking. I don't see linuus' heirs taking over
his supervisory role. Nor do I see linux making money, unless the
heirs want to also release the code in a non-free form.

So does that mean that everyone can do what they like
as long as they don't make money out of it?

The case of the linux is very muddled by the fact that
there are hundreds or thousands of authors now.
But even in the case of single-author software, the
interpretation of copyright is not clear to me.

My prediction is that if linus _was_ eaten by a shark, then
linux would immediately fork, and there would be multiple
supervisory committees, each claiming to channel the true
spirit of linux.

Someone might then buy the copyright to linus' work from the
heirs for a large sum of money, and they might try to make
really big trouble!
In fact, I would say that this would be very likely indeed.

Cheers,
Alan Kennington.

-- 
LinuxSA WWW: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/  IRC: #linuxsa on irc.linux.org.au
To unsubscribe from the LinuxSA list:
  mail linuxsa-request@linuxsa.org.au with "unsubscribe" as the subject