Make it a seven year rule: hardware vendors must release necessary source code for firmware, blobs, etc.
I think there should be a 20 year rule for all released commercial software to release the source code outside of national security concerns.
Make it a seven year rule: hardware vendors must release necessary source code for firmware, blobs, etc.
I think there should be a 20 year rule for all released commercial software to release the source code outside of national security concerns.
Seems like you may be interested in this petition: https://publiccode.eu
lol or what? How do you make people do a thing, anything, 20 years later?
Code escrow.
You factor in the expense of having your code releases escrowed by a third party (where part of the escrow contract itself is: "must be buildable from sources as provided"), and have a post-release pipeline that automatically uploads the new version. At the end of the term, the escrow holder releases all the versions.
This is a fairly common arrangement in high finance. If you want to supply services to a bank/insurer/etc. they will typically require an escrow arrangement as a contingency plan against you as a vendor going away. And yes, they pay the escrow costs.
There are countries that require published material to be submitted to a national archive[0]. A similar system could be done for software source code and made public on expiry.
[0] https://youtu.be/ZNVuIU6UUiM