Sunset License Rationale


Purpose

First and foremost, this distribution license will be a license with a sunset   
provision, to limit the duration of time before bits of the work start to pass
into the public domain.

Secondly, it will be a simplified, informal copyleft license. The style being
sought after is similar to the Unlicense, and if the length is significantly
over that it's a bug.




Reasoning

The duration of copyright has been extended over and over again to the point
that it's de facto perpetual. Copyright law has been famously subverted with
the GPL to produce "copyleft" which has the purpose of keeping a work open
rather than closed. The idea is to do something similar to subvert the time
that a work remains under copyright protections.

If done right the result should be that anyone wanting to use parts of a work
under the rules of public domain will either have to use code many years out of
date, or the work itself has stagnated to the point where nobody cares anyway.

Combining this idea with minimalistic copyleft clauses should fill another
hole in available licenses, as all current ones are exceedingly verbose and
precise.




Scope

This is primarily conceived of as a software license. While the result may be
applicable to other works, it may not be optimal for them.

Software patents are not something that will be mentioned or considered. The
position taken is that if software patents are a problem in your country, you
should reform the law.

Warranty disclaimers will also neither be mentioned nor considered. The position
taken is that your software should do what you say it does, and that you should
be responsible for what you release to the public. Again, if this is a problem
in your country, you should reform the law.

The focus is on the work actually released, not on spreading the license itself,
so dynamic linking will not be considered to constitute making a derivative
work.

Waiving anti-circumvention laws should be redundant and unnecessary, as the
license allows usage of the work for any purpose without restriction.

The license is not an EULA. Acceptance is not required to make use of the
licensed work.




License License

You may copy, distribute and use this rationale and accompanying license
document verbatim for any purpose. Changing them is allowed so long as the
license name is changed.