Luigi Rizzo wrote: > 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 ?
Yes, copyright expires. When it expires exactly depends on local legislation. Generally this is a number of years after the death of the longest living author. I believe in the US copyright generally expires 70 years after the death - or if the copyright is owned by a company, then it expires 120 years after creation (or 95 years after publication). There is a lot of documentation about copyright details available on the internet - but keep in mind that laws change frequently. So it's probably safe to assume that all code used in FreeBSD is still covered by copyright and all licenses granted by the authors still apply (untill one day the copyright expires). P.S. As with all legal stuff, there are always exceptions to the rule: specific cases and local legislation may differ a lot. Ciao, Johan
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