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Yes, however if copyright did not exist, GPL would be unnecessary, all software would be free software. Sure, the source code sometimes wouldn't be available, b
by GlitchMr 7y ago
Yes, however if copyright did not exist, GPL would be unnecessary, all software would be free software. Sure, the source code sometimes wouldn't be available, but there would be nothing legally preventing decompilation.
Sure, GPL software couldn't enforce releasing the source code, but for that matter, this is how it already works in European Union (as in EU, linking for purposes of interoperability is explicitly allowed).
- ryukafalz 7y ago>Sure, the source code sometimes wouldn't be available, but there would be nothing legally preventing decompilation. This is true but generally unhelpful. The result of decompilation often isn't nearly as readable as the original source, and at the very least you've lost all documentation. A world without copyright would look much closer to one with entirely permissively licensed software than one with entirely copyleft software.
- kube-system 7y agoUnfortunately, in a world without GPL, you might not have easy access to that binary. It could be installed on a piece of multi-million dollar enterprise hardware that you'd have to purchase to get one. That's probably exactly what companies like IBM would would do, if they weren't required to push their changes by GPL.
- GlitchMr 7y agoGPL doesn't prevent that unfortunately.
- kube-system 7y agoYes, it explicitly does. Even in version 1 this was addressed. See section 3a and 3b: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-1.0.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-1.0.html