[adrianN]

Most software you can buy is older than ten years. Do you want to lose copyright to every part of your product that has been stable? Imagine the useless churn as every company needs to make sure every library they use is substantially altered every couple of years to renew the copyright.

[mkl]

Public domain does not mean public. The source code could remain a trade secret.

More of an obstacle is competition from free past versions - a lot of people would be happy with a 10 year old version of Photoshop or MS Office. That's why I think it should be extendable to 20 years with a hefty fee (but not further, or only with a much heftier fee).

[mindslight]

If you do not publish source code, your binaries should be ineligible for copyright protection. There is very little creative work in the binaries themselves. Keeping your actual creative work hidden (especially from things like eventually being part of the public domain) but yet still expecting to receive the privilege of copyright is inequitable. Same thing with only publishing under digital restrictions management.

[cornholio]

That's impossible for a great number of reasons, at the very least the fact that the distinction between the source and the binary is irrelevant for copyright and impossible to define in the general case.

The GPL defines the source as the preferable working format to make changes and updates to the program, but you can see how that definition blows up in your face when there is no published source to begin with. "Your honor, that 50MB binary file that has a signature of a GCC compiled program IS the preferred working format for our company; indeed, it was created from temporary text files, but they were deleted as they were deemed unnecessary for a technically advanced company such ourselves. All further updates will be made in assembly language via binary patching, for maximum efficiency".

[mindslight]

The distinction is that the binary is a derivative work with no added creativity. I'm not saying this is how things are today, but rather I'm saying this is how things should be. In order to qualify for copyright protection, one should have to put the created work in escrow so it can actually enter the public domain when the copyright expires. If one wishes to control access to their work with other mechanisms that prevent fulfillment of even the very lopsided bargain that was struck with copyright, then one shouldn't get the privilege of copyright.

Also if the best of your "great number of reasons" is fallacious legal reasoning of the type software engineers tend to be drawn to, then I don't think that's much of an argument.

[cornholio]

Again, how do you prove my binary that I put in your copyright escrow facility is a derivative work and not a handcrafted assembly program? Sorry, but you are just uttering nonsense.

[mindslight]

Do you think the idea of binary analysis does not exist? Or that courts don't have a long history of deciding questions of judgement? The problem is also fundamentally quite similar to proving that a published binary is/isn't a derivative work of someone else's work.

Also handcrafted assembly isn't sufficient for your argument, but rather one would have to directly write a binary with a hex editor. Show me any binary larger than say 1 MB that was written with a hex editor. So really the burden of proof would be on anyone claiming that a large binary is direct creation.

[kube-system]

Then those who wish profit without sharing will just offer SaaS instead of binaries. Exactly as they do with a significant amount of copyleft-licensed software today.

Pulling back copyright doesn't necessarily force people to share -- people can also keep secrets. A primary purpose of IP law is to encourage sharing.

[mindslight]

The point is that if it is not actually working to encourage sharing, as is the case with DRM, compilation, or SaaS, then there is no longer a justification.

[kube-system]

Is it not? The amount of media created and circulated every day today is far greater than at any time in the past.

[mindslight]

Sure, but the media that will never enter the public domain is not being "shared" ?

[kristopolous]

Yes. People will use the official version for support and updates, like with everything else.