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As weird as it may seem, you should not forget that free software licenses are built upon the fabric of copyright. Without copyright, free software could not ex

As weird as it may seem, you should not forget that free software licenses are built upon the fabric of copyright. Without copyright, free software could not exist in its current form. For GPL-like "copyleft" licenses, there would be no way to enforce that binary distributions of derived works are accompanied by their source code. Similarly, in the context of permissive BSD/MIT-style licenses, there would be no way to enforce attribution. So, given that FOSS---which a large portion of the HN crowd depends on---cannot work without copyright (at least not in its current form), the recent discussions may be less of a surprise.

cortesoft 5y ago
Maybe... although I personally think that the GPL and other 'copy left' licenses aren't the reason open source has prospered, nor do I think enforcing attribution really helps the FOSS world that much. People write and share code because it is useful to do that, not because licenses require them to. I think FOSS would do fine with no copyright, and in fact more software might end up open source if we had ZERO copyright... why not make your code open source and get back contributions when your code would end up being shared anyway?
- dublin 5y ago
  There were other open source licenses at the party before the GPL dropped its controversial "viral" turd in the punchbowl - and many of them still exist nearly unmodified. (e.g. BSD with attribution removed, etc.)
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    I know, but I am just questioning whether any license is needed for open source to prosper. I am positing that if licenses didn't exist, and anyone could do anything they want with any bit of code they see, open source would still prosper.
    - okamiueru 5y ago
      That just isn't how things work. I believe you are making the wrong assumption that the same amount of open source work would exist. If that were the case, then yes, it wouldn't matter that much. But, a lot of contributions to open source wouldn't have existed if it wasn't for the licenses. That's the examples you've been given.
      - cortesoft 5y ago
        There might be some contributions that wouldn't have happened, but there also might have been others that did happen. My hypothetical was in a world with no copyright or license at all.... so all proprietary code would be copyable, too
        okamiueru 5y ago
        Proprietary code would by definition not be copyable, because it would be... proprietary. It's the opposite to open source. The thing that incentivises open sourcing proprietary source code is exactly things like licenses... Your imagined scenario is just "no license for open source, and free reign for closed source". It makes no sense to me.
        cortesoft 5y ago
        If no code was copyrightable nor licensable, people could reverse engineer any code they get access to. It would be hard to keep code completely proprietary. You would not be able to distribute your code at all. I am not saying this is the way we want to go, I am just curious about the thought experiment.
        okamiueru 5y ago
        Ok, if it's for a thought experiment then I'll play along. Reverse engineering source code is not as easy as you make it out to be. Not only that, but reverse engineering in the sense of black box is not a violation of most existing licenses. And, if we're talking about decompiling code into something useful, that too is a tall order.
- mcguire 5y ago
  You may think that, but history argues otherwise. See the Unix Wars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars).
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    I am not sure I follow. Are you saying licenses are what stopped the UNIX wars?
    - ripdog 5y ago
      IMO Linux won because its license forced everyone who used and extended it to open their changes - this changes the calculus for firms building products on Linux to make it more worthwhile to upstream their changes to reduce their local maintenance burden. Compare this to something like the playstation 4, which used freeBSD as the base of their OS, and contributed nothing back to the project at all.
      - Jasper_ 5y ago
        Linux "won" because SGI very loudly shit the bed and betting on Itanium, taking IRIX with it, DEC was in the process of making the future of Tru64 very confusing with the Alpha, a computer that didn't support their flagship OS, and HP was EOLing HP/UX because they bet everything on IBM's OS/2 Warp. The only big UNIX vendor left was Sun Microsystems, and Solaris indeed dominated the 90s dotcom era. Everybody was running SPARC and SunOS servers. It wouldn't be until the mid 2000s when Linux started picking up the pieces left behind after Red Hat started their server product and certification program. For a long time, Linux was strictly a hobbyist OS. It later dominated by simply being the last one standing after everyone else fell.
        mcguire 5y ago
        The true competitive threat to the Unix vendors wasn't each other, it was Microsoft. And "for a long time" was actually a fairly short time. Linux began to approach feature-comparability fast, and ran on PCs, not $10,000 workstations (that were getting beat power-wise by PCs).
- em-bee 5y ago
  people do, but companies don't. projects like openwrt would not exist if it weren't for copyright enforcement.

cortesoft 5y ago

Maybe... although I personally think that the GPL and other 'copy left' licenses aren't the reason open source has prospered, nor do I think enforcing attribution really helps the FOSS world that much. People write and share code because it is useful to do that, not because licenses require them to. I think FOSS would do fine with no copyright, and in fact more software might end up open source if we had ZERO copyright... why not make your code open source and get back contributions when your code would end up being shared anyway?

dublin 5y ago
There were other open source licenses at the party before the GPL dropped its controversial "viral" turd in the punchbowl - and many of them still exist nearly unmodified. (e.g. BSD with attribution removed, etc.)
- cortesoft 5y ago
  I know, but I am just questioning whether any license is needed for open source to prosper. I am positing that if licenses didn't exist, and anyone could do anything they want with any bit of code they see, open source would still prosper.
  - okamiueru 5y ago
    That just isn't how things work. I believe you are making the wrong assumption that the same amount of open source work would exist. If that were the case, then yes, it wouldn't matter that much. But, a lot of contributions to open source wouldn't have existed if it wasn't for the licenses. That's the examples you've been given.
    - cortesoft 5y ago
      There might be some contributions that wouldn't have happened, but there also might have been others that did happen. My hypothetical was in a world with no copyright or license at all.... so all proprietary code would be copyable, too
      - okamiueru 5y ago
        Proprietary code would by definition not be copyable, because it would be... proprietary. It's the opposite to open source. The thing that incentivises open sourcing proprietary source code is exactly things like licenses... Your imagined scenario is just "no license for open source, and free reign for closed source". It makes no sense to me.
        cortesoft 5y ago
        If no code was copyrightable nor licensable, people could reverse engineer any code they get access to. It would be hard to keep code completely proprietary. You would not be able to distribute your code at all. I am not saying this is the way we want to go, I am just curious about the thought experiment.
        okamiueru 5y ago
        Ok, if it's for a thought experiment then I'll play along. Reverse engineering source code is not as easy as you make it out to be. Not only that, but reverse engineering in the sense of black box is not a violation of most existing licenses. And, if we're talking about decompiling code into something useful, that too is a tall order.
mcguire 5y ago
You may think that, but history argues otherwise. See the Unix Wars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars).
- cortesoft 5y ago
  I am not sure I follow. Are you saying licenses are what stopped the UNIX wars?
  - ripdog 5y ago
    IMO Linux won because its license forced everyone who used and extended it to open their changes - this changes the calculus for firms building products on Linux to make it more worthwhile to upstream their changes to reduce their local maintenance burden. Compare this to something like the playstation 4, which used freeBSD as the base of their OS, and contributed nothing back to the project at all.
    - Jasper_ 5y ago
      Linux "won" because SGI very loudly shit the bed and betting on Itanium, taking IRIX with it, DEC was in the process of making the future of Tru64 very confusing with the Alpha, a computer that didn't support their flagship OS, and HP was EOLing HP/UX because they bet everything on IBM's OS/2 Warp. The only big UNIX vendor left was Sun Microsystems, and Solaris indeed dominated the 90s dotcom era. Everybody was running SPARC and SunOS servers. It wouldn't be until the mid 2000s when Linux started picking up the pieces left behind after Red Hat started their server product and certification program. For a long time, Linux was strictly a hobbyist OS. It later dominated by simply being the last one standing after everyone else fell.
      - mcguire 5y ago
        The true competitive threat to the Unix vendors wasn't each other, it was Microsoft. And "for a long time" was actually a fairly short time. Linux began to approach feature-comparability fast, and ran on PCs, not $10,000 workstations (that were getting beat power-wise by PCs).
em-bee 5y ago
people do, but companies don't. projects like openwrt would not exist if it weren't for copyright enforcement.