Comment on Campaigners urge EU to mandate 15 years of OS updates
Buffalox@lemmy.world 9 hours agoI have no idea what I’m supposed to see from you link, I don’t see any particular knowledge, or description of any particular legal consequences.
Obviously software provided for free “as is”, cannot be required to be maintained. And 9if it is owned by the public which is the case with FOSS, there is no “owner” who can be made responsible.
ell1e@leminal.space 7 hours ago
If you read the post in detail, it should answer your questions. The “owner” always exists and is typically the maintainer, if in doubt that’s the person with repository write access.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Nope, AFAIK that is not legally applicable, that is very clear with licenses like MIT BSD etc, and for GPL in all versions it’s very explicitly stated in the license.
You can also release as simply public domain, which very obviously means nobody owns as it is owned by everybody.
Generally if you give something away for free, you can’t be claimed to be the owner.
I have no idea where that idea should come from, some typical anti EU alarmists maybe? And I bet there is zero legal precedent for that. And I seriously doubt any lawyer would support your claim.
If however you choose a license where the creator keeps ownership it may be different, but then it’s not FOSS.