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In a world without intellectual property, source available would equal free software. I think the FSF has tried to squash too many semantic, technical and lega
by lone_haxx0r 7y ago
In a world without intellectual property, source available would equal free software.
I think the FSF has tried to squash too many semantic, technical and legal subtleties into the GPL, the words free, libre, etc.
- anchpop 7y agoNo it wouldn't, for software to be "Free software" it must be GPL-or-other-copyleft-license licensed, which aside from being trivially impossible in a world without intellectual property laws, also has different outcomes than placing the source in the public domain. For example nothing prevents me from taking some public domain code and including it in my closed-source application, but the GPL forbids this.
- pessimizer 7y agoIn a world without intellectual property, your closed-source application would be a trade secret that would quickly get out.
- klez 7y agoNo, for free software to be "Free Software" it must respect the Four Freedoms (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html). GPL-or-other-copyleft-license happens to respect them, but so do the Apache, BSDs, MIT and other licenses which are not copyleft. Note: "Copyleft" as opposed to simply Free Software entails reciprocity, e.g., the "viral" part of the GPL. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft