[pp.int.general] Open source and 5 years of copyright

[Wesley Schwengle]

Hello all,

my name is Wesley Schwengle and I'm member and a candidate of the Dutch
pirateparty. As an active open source user I have been asked to involve
the Dutch open source community in the discussion and to get their
support. However, before I do this, I want to know what the opinion is,
of Richard Stallman in particular, regarding the wish of reducing
copyright to 5 years for commercial means. And also, do you know what
others within the open source community have to say about this?

IMO, reducing the length of copyright to 5 years will kill open source
software as we know it, this also includes Creative commons licenses.

People who wish to keep their work open by using an open source license
or CC license cannot protect their work after 5 years from being using
in closed source environment. One could take the Linux kernel source
tree of 5 years ago, incorporate this in his product, without having to
respect the GPL license. This could (and should) never be the goal of
the pirateparty and the copyright reforms it proposes.


Cheers,
Wesley