Re: Thoughts about gnuplot license and copyrights

[Hans-Bernhard B. <br...@ph...>]

Ethan Merritt wrote:

> Only the license needs to persist.  A permanent license remains valid
> even if the original licensing body no longer exists.

The problem is that AFAIK copyright falls under civil law, i.e. if 
somebody decided to violate the license after the copyright holder(s) 
have become terminally unavailable, there's nobody left who could sue 
them. A license without a legal body holding it would become 
unenforcable, and that cannot ever be a good thing.

The more immediate problem with the gnuplot license as-is, is that after
the copyright holders are gone, nobody can ever make an official release
again. That's a "single point of failure" problem, and really needs to
be addressed. The GPL addresses it by granting all licensees full
distribution privileges, other license (you've mentioned PINE), by
relying on an effectively immortal copyright holder.