My understanding is that the whole reason GPL has its stipulations is to counter-balance the lack of commons caused by commercial exploitation and expansion of copyright. So yes.
I completely agree, that's the part that I like about the GPL. That's why I'm a bit iffy about removing copyright outright (as it would mostly affect open source projects, proprietary software rarely has an available source that would be made free by such a move). But I see the point.
I mean the goal of GPLv3 and other copyleft licenses is to ensure that innovation building on the licensed work is also made available so others may continue to innovate, no? In my mind reducing copyright terms is aligned to that goal. You can disagree with that goal, but I don’t see anything inconsistent about reducing copyright terms and allowing copyleft to extend for a longer period.
Even so, I think in most cases if a piece of software has been unedited for 10 years it’s either feature-complete or obsolete. If it’s been under development for those 10 years, the original version being released into the public domain probably isn’t a significant threat to innovation by way of closed source improvements being made.
