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Comment by gwd | Hacker News Reader

> It’s patently clear2 that the license allows this, and it surprises me that this is rarely brought up in debates about GPL-3.0-only and GPL-3.0-or-later.

It's an interesting avenue, but the ultimate problem is that people die and/or lose interest in projects. What happens to this particular project if Runxi dies, or decides to make furniture out of wood instead? That basically becomes "GPL-3.0-only" again.

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I wonder if one can leave written what to do in such cases in their will.

(Similarly to what the author of the article wrote: i’m not a lawyer and this is not legal advice)

Could you not just add that to the license itself?

The GPL itself is copyrighted and the FSF expressly forbids variants.

Got it, yeah I see that now

Every project becomes public domain if the copyright holder stops being able to sue you btw

When a copyright holder dies, their copy rights pass on to their heirs. Depending on the state, this means it can go to cousins or twelfth cousins twice removed if that's all that is alive. Failing that, it goes to the state. Any/all of these could potentially sue if there is money in it.

They could, which is why I said when the copyright holder loses the ability to sue, not when the creator dies.

When it's a twelfth cousin they won't even know they have the copyright. Because it's an implicit right, they don't enumerate all your copyrights and tell your heir about them. The heir has to know.

You enter an "unclear title" scenario which may mean that individuals are fine using it, but no company wants to get involved because of the risks.

Similar things happen with physical property, where a title cannot be cleared and either people just live with it or they go to court to get it "reset".

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