Free will [LWN.net]

Free will

Posted Aug 31, 2015 7:24 UTC (Mon) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501)
Parent article: Copyright assignment and license enforcement for Debian

One topic that was raised (IIRC) during the Q&A session was the ability to leave all the copyrights for my code in my will to a certain trusted organization (and hence still keep it for my lifetime, but avoid bothering whatever projects dealing with my heirs. Kuhn said that they looked into that, but it turned out to be much trickier than expected. Is it simpler in other countries?

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Free will

Posted Sep 3, 2015 15:51 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]

One unfortunate issue there is that taxes may apply to willed assets that don't apply to gifts/donations made while alive. So, any attempt to will copyrights or similar would suggest they have value, at which point they might get tied up for a long time while evaluating just how much value, which becomes a penalty on other assets. On the other hand, if you gift/donate those copyrights while alive, you get to decide their value, and they don't get taxed.

...actually, that raises a *very* interesting question. If you could place a defensible value on copyrights, could a copyright assignment to a non-profit organization count as a charitable donation? The charitable organization doesn't pay taxes anyway, and you could deduct the result from your taxable income.