(Might as well add one more interesting little copyright twist that might have some interesting consequences for free software, and that has been almost completely overlooked)
In the US, there is a very interesting thing in copyright called the termination right. It probably won't have much affect on software (it is mostly a music and book thing), but there is a remote chance it could be significant in some cases.
The termination right was meant to address the situation where you have a young artist who produces a great work when they are early enough in their career that they are unknown and have almost no bargaining power, and the artist ends up making very little money from the work--it is the music company or book publishers that signs them that ends up making a ton of money.
What the termination right does, basically, is 35 years after the artist signed away their copyrights to the music company or book publisher, the artist is given a window in which they can take back the copyright. They can then negotiate a new deal with the publishers, with much better terms now that they are an established artist instead of an unknown kid.
You might expect publishers would be smart, and include in their contracts with new young artists that the artist agrees not to invoke the termination right when it vests. Congress was smart enough to realize that publishers would do that, and so made it so that you cannot contract away your termination right.
As I said, this is generally irrelevant for software. First, termination rights do not apply to works for hire. Almost all closed source software is written as a work for hire, I suspect. So, as amusing as it would be for some retired COBOL programmer to reclaim copyright on some major bank's ancient but still in service mainframe software, it probably is not going to happen.
Second, not much software survives 35 years. Even if something does not officially get replaced or retired, over 35 years it will usually accumulate enough piecemeal rewrites that nothing is left of the original--not even as a derivative work.
Still, with open source, we now have a lot of code in wide use that was NOT work for hire. Could there be fragments of open source projects that actually make it through 35 years intact, and make the termination right actually relevant?
Correct. The termination clauses has an interesting - if somewhat unlikely - effect on software.
FLOSS software which depend on the ability to distribute new copies could have their license terminated after the 35 years, given that said software still existed in large enough volume to qualify for copyright status. The first thing I can think of would be the TCP/IP stack that was created in BSD, that if terminated could cause some serious problems for Apple and other OS that depend on that code.
In the US, there is a very interesting thing in copyright called the termination right. It probably won't have much affect on software (it is mostly a music and book thing), but there is a remote chance it could be significant in some cases.
The termination right was meant to address the situation where you have a young artist who produces a great work when they are early enough in their career that they are unknown and have almost no bargaining power, and the artist ends up making very little money from the work--it is the music company or book publishers that signs them that ends up making a ton of money.
What the termination right does, basically, is 35 years after the artist signed away their copyrights to the music company or book publisher, the artist is given a window in which they can take back the copyright. They can then negotiate a new deal with the publishers, with much better terms now that they are an established artist instead of an unknown kid.
You might expect publishers would be smart, and include in their contracts with new young artists that the artist agrees not to invoke the termination right when it vests. Congress was smart enough to realize that publishers would do that, and so made it so that you cannot contract away your termination right.
As I said, this is generally irrelevant for software. First, termination rights do not apply to works for hire. Almost all closed source software is written as a work for hire, I suspect. So, as amusing as it would be for some retired COBOL programmer to reclaim copyright on some major bank's ancient but still in service mainframe software, it probably is not going to happen.
Second, not much software survives 35 years. Even if something does not officially get replaced or retired, over 35 years it will usually accumulate enough piecemeal rewrites that nothing is left of the original--not even as a derivative work.
Still, with open source, we now have a lot of code in wide use that was NOT work for hire. Could there be fragments of open source projects that actually make it through 35 years intact, and make the termination right actually relevant?