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That's not what I'm saying, and I don't think I'm spreading any falsehoods about free software licenses here. Building a business is about distribution as well

That's not what I'm saying, and I don't think I'm spreading any falsehoods about free software licenses here. Building a business is about distribution as well as product. My product is pretty good, but my distribution, compared to a large player with an existing user base, is woeful. If I licensed under GPL I would be giving explicit legal permission to any big player (who was open source) to take my product for free, and compete with me solely on distribution. Licensing my product in the above way wouldn't be good for me financially, and as a result would decrease my likelihood of working full time on Dependabot. Worse still, it would disproportionally decrease my returns from working on the product, as opposed to distribution. Thanks to copyright law we don't need to hide our codebases in order to charge for our work. That's a great thing, and there should be acceptance of code that is developed in public but without a permissive license. It's a perfectly rational decision, and creators shouldn't be put under pressure to give their development work away for free instead.

ttoinou 8y ago
Thanks to copyright law we don't need to hide our codebases in order to charge for our work. I don't understand that part ?
- greysteil 8y ago
  Before patents, copyright law, and all that, secrecy was the only way to stop people copying your stuff. That was kinda crappy, and people went to great lengths to obfuscate their IP, expending lots of effort on something that had no benefit for their customers / the world. Intellectual property law changed that - it made it possible for people to openly disclose their inventions whilst maintaining control of them (normally with some conditions). It was a really, really good thing for society, as it dramatically increased the returns to "thinking work". I can probably dig out a link if you're interested.
  - ttoinou 8y ago
    How is copyright / patents / IP making companies' code bases open to public or it's secrecy is not as guarded as before (as implied by your quote) ?
    - michaelmrose 8y ago
      Especially since copyright predates software or you know computers.
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    Citation needed.

ttoinou 8y ago

Thanks to copyright law we don't need to hide our codebases in order to charge for our work. I don't understand that part ?

greysteil 8y ago
Before patents, copyright law, and all that, secrecy was the only way to stop people copying your stuff. That was kinda crappy, and people went to great lengths to obfuscate their IP, expending lots of effort on something that had no benefit for their customers / the world. Intellectual property law changed that - it made it possible for people to openly disclose their inventions whilst maintaining control of them (normally with some conditions). It was a really, really good thing for society, as it dramatically increased the returns to "thinking work". I can probably dig out a link if you're interested.
- ttoinou 8y ago
  How is copyright / patents / IP making companies' code bases open to public or it's secrecy is not as guarded as before (as implied by your quote) ?
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    Especially since copyright predates software or you know computers.
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  Citation needed.