From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG  Wed Mar 25 09:36:04 2009
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Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 10:41:00 +0100
From: Luigi Rizzo <rizzo@iet.unipi.it>
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Subject: Re: does Copyright on source files expire ?
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On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 05:31:52AM -0400, David Schultz wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 25, 2009, Luigi Rizzo wrote:
> > Someone just asked me permission to move to a 3-clause BSD
> > copyright some piece of software that I haven't touched in 10+ years.
> > 
> > I said yes, but then I was wondering what happens if the
> > person listed is not responding or not reachable anymore:
> > does copyright on source code expire, and if so, when ?
> > (I suppose it is related to either the date listed on the copyright,
> > or to the date of some remarkable event for the author).
> 
> In the US, the rule that applies most of the time is that
> Copyright expires 70 years after the author dies, although there
> are many special cases where the term differs.
> 
> A person's Copyright doesn't go away just because they die,
> disappear, or fail to respond. If you can't contact them, their
> heirs, or whomever they transferred the Copyright to, you're stuck.

so it's worse than a patent :)

	cheers
	luigi