> how do we get the benefits of the GPL - especially receiving things like source code - if we no longer have copyright? It’s not obvious to me that enforceabl

> how do we get the benefits of the GPL - especially receiving things like source code - if we no longer have copyright? It’s not obvious to me that enforceable copyleft licences have increased the availability of free software to such an extent as to outweigh the loss of freedom effected by normal copyrights. Abolishing copyright (or less radically, rejecting the prevailing interpretation of copyright law which says that software is a “literary work”) would do more to advance the four essential software freedoms than any copyleft licence. Notably, copyright is the only thing standing in the way of freedoms 2 and 3. As for freedom 1, companies would still treat their source code as a trade secret, but without copyright they’d have no recourse against people republishing leaked source code, which could then be incorporated into free software projects.