[libreplanet-discuss] Buying the rights to proprietary programs to free them

[Fabio Pesari]

We hear about companies like Facebook and Google buying out startups all
the time and I thought, why don't we use crowdfunding to buy the rights
to proprietary programs ourselves and release their code under the GPL?
(Of course, we have to be sure all their dependencies are also free).

New programs might be too expensive but we might be able to buy the
rights to some older programs, as well as some indie games (of course,
we'd release the assets under the CC BY-SA in that case).

Can this be done? I know it would require huge sums of money but I think
plenty of people would donate to free a program like Renoise or a game
like Mount & Blade: Warband or Dwarf Fortress.