Ok folks, here is a potential answer to the issue of "abandonware" .
Possibly even a poison pill to the "buy a project to bury it" megacorp game too.
I freely admit to not being the most polished proponent for a concept, but sincerity counts too I hope.
Le me raise an initial question.
Can you think of an IP work that was rendered "dead" to us by abandonment of some sort?
The kernel of this concept is to keep code from being buried by abandonment either intentional or otherwise.
It was repeated many times in earlier discussions on our list that a creator/author/coder has certain rights to their work
.Author's rights are assignable, even possibly with event clauses according to some precedents in EULA law .
That last one in my first application being that if one clause is held invalid all others NOT so invalided remain in force.
SO, as some of us are coders and authors or other "content creators" what of a concept where:
If we assign rights to one of our works to external parties they have to "use it or lose it"so to speak.
Publish us or give our rights back! Have our works in use and circulation or we get them back
Or at our option set them free as opposed to letting them be buried alive.
This for example would not have stopped MS from buying Hotmail, but potentially COULD have returned the original; CODE of the project to the FOSS community! Same with some of the projects that were under earlier discussion. A megacorp CAN still decide to wantonly abandon a project, but the CODE needs a way of not being denied "life"
Possibly a tagline conveying a "release date" for a work" addendum to CC type contracts?
EX: The work that is known as "FooBlank" will be released on 30 Feb 2008.
Constructive comments folks?
"The code we create deserves a chance to be obtainable"
"