Re:What will enter the public domain in 2022
by bruce511 on Friday December 03, 2021 @07:36AM
(#29429318)
the parent posted,
>> I would be very impressed with any code
And I would argue that _lots_ of the code in today's shipping products (which I listed, and others) use lots of code laid down more than 20 years ago.
Sure there's lots more in Linux now, but lots of the code is also basically unchanged from 20 years ago. It's not like GREP gets a complete rewrite every 5 years...
I'm not saying that I'd be up for using a Linux install from 20 years ago, but hey "any code" is a lot more than "complete install".
MySQL 4.0 was a lot better than 3.23 IIRC, and isn't quite 20 years old either.
IMHO, it's not so bad for the old version to become unrestricted; more recent changes can still be restricted. And 20 years of updates are often compelling enough to submit to restrictions.
What number seems right to you though? 95 years for work for hire or death of author + 70 (which is gonna be fun to track down for open source works with many author) seems rather long to me.