Second this and adding: Fiduciary responsibility and how US economic law places it above all else. Other jurisdictions, particularly in Europe, require companies to balance multiple responsibilities, such as towards their workforce, societal, ecological, and yes, fiduciary, too. It doesn’t solve all issues and can be vague AF, but at least well-meaning CEOs can fall back to these other corporate responsibilities in court while the same CEO would be sued into oblivion by US shareholders.

I’m not ideologically opposed to people earning money with their unique ideas and artistic execution. Creative work is work is work. But I don’t think that IP should be the gift that keeps on giving three generations after an authors death. IMHO, the public has a reasonable interest in works remaining available, that’s why the “maintenance / out of print” clause. Writing good code is authorship. It’s only natural the same rules apply, though I wouldn’t be principally opposed to applying different time lines, e.g., 5 years for unmaintained proprietary code vs 20 years for books, to reflect the uniquely fast pace of software development vs the more long-lasting beauty of traditional art and literature. Of course there would need to be some very careful wording to define maintenance (e.g., in respect to which platform? What about versions of the same software) and to prevent on-paper continued availability of books at an inappropriately increased price. However, I believe the law makers and the courts could handle this medium diff if there was political will.

Yeah, how about we shorten that to a cumulative 10 years out of support / maintenance / print or after the death of the author / artist, whatever earlier. For software, a five years out of support threshold would honestly be preferable but I’ll be generous.

Software that is not actively maintained for a certain time should become public property. The same goes for books or music that go out of print for so long. “you want to sell me your original product? That’s cool. You don’t wanna do that anymore? Alright, but no need to bury it in obscurity.”

Appreciate the recommendations. I will give IronFox a try.

I often feel a little ‘legislative paralysis’. On the one hand, I want as little government interference in the free web as possible. On the other hand we can see first hand that web anarchy collapses into web oligarchy. I guess the EU is demonstrating that targeted legislation, like one click unsubscribe or one click cookie denial, can improve the web experience and privacy even beyond their borders. Baby steps… When do we get one click delete all my data? And when does a single page start caring whether my browser sends a Do not track request or not? Until then, it’s back to private privacy measures… Even if that’s an uphill battle.