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People have to make best of it with the less than ideal copyright system. Some open-by-default system would be a better alternative for sure.
by realusername 4y ago
People have to make best of it with the less than ideal copyright system. Some open-by-default system would be a better alternative for sure.
- leni536 4y agoI'm not sure. If software copyright didn't exist, then source code would still be treated as trade secret. Code obfuscation would be used to make reverse engineering harder and source code wouldn't be provided, which is not a lot of change for proprietary software. In addition, copyleft and free software attributions would not exist without a framework of enforcment. A clear loss for free software. Free software, apart from some very permissive licenses, requires copyright to exist.
- realusername 4y agoCopyright isn't the only way to organise sofware, mandatory laws to open the code could exist as well. You are right that regulations need to exist for free software to exist but copyright isn't necessary one of them.