I doubt any would describe my voice as "loud", but I suspect I fall into the 0.01% you mention.
I sell code (programming libraries, and commercial business systems) which have been under continual development sint 1996. So 27 years.
Copyright in this context would be complicated in a "20 year" model. Last month saw a significant upgrade to a product first released in 2000. Should the 2K version be public domain now?
I get the main complaint, especially in the context of old games like infocom (which are abandoned). It feels like those should move gracefully to public domain. But on the other hand there are those of us who do still make a living from old, but active, code.
I do agree that current copyright is absurdly long, but I also understand why Disney et al see ongoing value in their creations and are prepared to lobby for that value.
I don't think there's a simple fix here, one which covers such a wide set of circumstances. All the fixes I've seen proposed are "great for x, terrible for y".
Copyright timer would be reset for every new release. So the version of the library you released in 2000 would be out of copyright, but the version you released last month wouldn't be. I guess there is a risk that someone will take your version from 2000, reverse engineer it, and release a competing product, but it seems like a minor risk.
For yhe most part, Code-wise I would not be harmed by that. (We supply source code anyway so there are no secrets there.)
Market-wise I could see a fair bit of confusion as an old (now public domain) version floats around with the same name (but different version number) to the commercial version.
Of course this is likely immaterial anyway. Unless someone bothered to archive the version at the time, that version no longer exists. We can date it (from the release notes) but I no longer have that build in the archive.
I sell code (programming libraries, and commercial business systems) which have been under continual development sint 1996. So 27 years.
Copyright in this context would be complicated in a "20 year" model. Last month saw a significant upgrade to a product first released in 2000. Should the 2K version be public domain now?
I get the main complaint, especially in the context of old games like infocom (which are abandoned). It feels like those should move gracefully to public domain. But on the other hand there are those of us who do still make a living from old, but active, code.
I do agree that current copyright is absurdly long, but I also understand why Disney et al see ongoing value in their creations and are prepared to lobby for that value.
I don't think there's a simple fix here, one which covers such a wide set of circumstances. All the fixes I've seen proposed are "great for x, terrible for y".