[FASherman]

Originally Posted by Marco van Herwaarden

Sorry but copyright laws only look who created an "original work", not if it is maintained or not.

Actually, thats not entirely true.

Copyrights can also be shared and transfered and that is what is at issue here. By virtue of using this site, coders should agree to a shared copyright with the site.

At such time as the coser stops supporting their hack for a specified period of time, they agree that the copyright is then transfered in whole to the site.

The site may then decide to share that copyright with another coder who offers to take over maintenance/development.

Its not difficult to come up with the legalese for the agreement, nor is it difficult to implement agreeing to the terms with the upload or coming up with a request system to take over the code.

And here's a neat little feature...

Since its a shared copyright, if the coder who takes over the code cannot do so with the intention of making it commercial.

And, since the code originally uploaded is a shared copyright, for the coder to make a commercial version, you can wrap up legal language that the site transfers its shared portion of the copyright only if the author maintains a "lite" version for X number of months.

While I realize this site isn't an offical Jelsoft site, there are close ties to Jelsoft. I'm sure their legal counsel offer a more indepth analysis of the idea, but it is very possible and would solve multiple problems.