4 ms·

Some of the early Free Software ideologues specifically referred to copyleft as a way of using the copyright system against itself, but ultimately they would ha

Some of the early Free Software ideologues specifically referred to copyleft as a way of using the copyright system against itself, but ultimately they would have preferred no copyright at all.

aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> Some of the early Free Software ideologues specifically referred to copyleft as a way of using the copyright system against itself, but ultimately they would have preferred no copyright at all. If they really preferred no copyright as an ideal, they would have created a free software license that imitates the no-copyright state as far as possible in the given system: A license that does allow to distribute compiled code (executable binaries) without the necessity to provide the source code, but which also does not forbid any person to redistribute, modify, reverse-engineer, ... these binary files without having to ask for permission (with a virality in the latter conditions). Perhaps such a license would also contain clauses that by using the software, you give any other user of this piece of software for any applicable software patent (to handle the situation regarding software patents, which is a topic separate from copyright, but still relevant to FOSS). I am not aware of the existence of any such an open-source license.
- zzo38computer 3y ago
  I had also had a similar idea, and am also not aware of such a thing, nor about how to write such a thing. (I also want to not require attribution, to require that other distributions and derivative works that have been published must also provide the same permissions to anyone else (even if the license is not included), that you are only sued for violation of this license if you sue or otherwise use legal methods (e.g. lawsuits, DMCA, etc) to stop someone from exercising their rights under this license, and that (for practical purposes) you may relicense any derivative work by GNU GPL 3 and GNU AGPL 3 (or later versions) if you have what you need in order to do it (in this case, source code and attribution are needed to relicense it in this way).)
- globular-toast 3y ago
  The GPL uses copyleft to both disable copyright and turn software into something more like a book that doesn't have a distinction between binary and source code. So it effectively also disables arseholes who would refuse to share with the community they took from. It's brilliant!
bruce511 3y ago
I'm not sure that's true. Lacking copyright restrictions, I can take any AGPL code, compile it into my commercial product, and distribute only the binary. In other words, lacking copyright restrictions, hinders the goal of Free Software, it doesnt enhance it.
- Karliss 3y ago
  What happens if you include AGPL code into your commercial product assuming copyright laws exists: * you must give source code (to the software users, not necessarily to anyone) * receivers of software gain rights to modify it (because AGPL says so) * receivers of software gain rights to further distribute it with or without modifications (because AGPL says so) What happens in the previous scenario without copyright law: * receivers of software can modify it (because copyright law doesn't prevent it) * receivers of software can further distribute it (because copyright law doesn't prevent it) Even more so the same happens automatically if you don't include AGPL code. That's 2/3 things which copyleft code grants not being necessary because there is nothing preventing it. Sure not having the source code and having to reverse engineer things to modify them takes more effort. But large portion of software is closed source anyway, reality is that in many case GPL type licenses instead of increasing amount of open source software simply prevents its usage in the commercial software. The current trend with programming languages is going for higher level ones which are much easier to reverse engineer or require barely any reverse engineering. There are also plenty examples where copyright law get's used to prevent doing anything near the product containing closed source software not even directly modifying the software in situations where people are willing to spend the effort for creating new software or do the reverse engineering. Stuff like John Deer preventing repairs because you own the tractor but not the software. Cricut (vinyl cutter maker) preventing creation of third party desktop software for using their hardware because that would somehow violate copyrights of their firmware. Preventing commercial software from using open source libraries isn't the goal of Free Software. It's a middle finger for copyright law doing the same in opposite direction. The idea is that benefits of being able to freely modify and distribute any software might be might outweigh the few cases where software vendor decided instead of not using the GPL library to make their whole software open source. We can only speculate how it would play out in long term. Would more commercial software be written using C++ instead of javascript and electron? Would more software be server side only? Would obfuscation be more widely used? Or would everyone accept that that's the norm, which wouldn't be that different from how things were in the early days of computers. I don't doubt that if copyright was suddenly one day canceled companies would use every possibility to claw back privileges they had before. Once something is given it's hard to take away.

Some of the early Free Software ideologues specifically referred to copyleft as a way of using the copyright system against itself, but ultimately they would have preferred no copyright at all.

aleph_minus_one 3y ago

> Some of the early Free Software ideologues specifically referred to copyleft as a way of using the copyright system against itself, but ultimately they would have preferred no copyright at all. If they really preferred no copyright as an ideal, they would have created a free software license that imitates the no-copyright state as far as possible in the given system: A license that does allow to distribute compiled code (executable binaries) without the necessity to provide the source code, but which also does not forbid any person to redistribute, modify, reverse-engineer, ... these binary files without having to ask for permission (with a virality in the latter conditions). Perhaps such a license would also contain clauses that by using the software, you give any other user of this piece of software for any applicable software patent (to handle the situation regarding software patents, which is a topic separate from copyright, but still relevant to FOSS). I am not aware of the existence of any such an open-source license.

zzo38computer 3y ago
I had also had a similar idea, and am also not aware of such a thing, nor about how to write such a thing. (I also want to not require attribution, to require that other distributions and derivative works that have been published must also provide the same permissions to anyone else (even if the license is not included), that you are only sued for violation of this license if you sue or otherwise use legal methods (e.g. lawsuits, DMCA, etc) to stop someone from exercising their rights under this license, and that (for practical purposes) you may relicense any derivative work by GNU GPL 3 and GNU AGPL 3 (or later versions) if you have what you need in order to do it (in this case, source code and attribution are needed to relicense it in this way).)
globular-toast 3y ago
The GPL uses copyleft to both disable copyright and turn software into something more like a book that doesn't have a distinction between binary and source code. So it effectively also disables arseholes who would refuse to share with the community they took from. It's brilliant!

bruce511 3y ago

I'm not sure that's true. Lacking copyright restrictions, I can take any AGPL code, compile it into my commercial product, and distribute only the binary. In other words, lacking copyright restrictions, hinders the goal of Free Software, it doesnt enhance it.

Karliss 3y ago
What happens if you include AGPL code into your commercial product assuming copyright laws exists: * you must give source code (to the software users, not necessarily to anyone) * receivers of software gain rights to modify it (because AGPL says so) * receivers of software gain rights to further distribute it with or without modifications (because AGPL says so) What happens in the previous scenario without copyright law: * receivers of software can modify it (because copyright law doesn't prevent it) * receivers of software can further distribute it (because copyright law doesn't prevent it) Even more so the same happens automatically if you don't include AGPL code. That's 2/3 things which copyleft code grants not being necessary because there is nothing preventing it. Sure not having the source code and having to reverse engineer things to modify them takes more effort. But large portion of software is closed source anyway, reality is that in many case GPL type licenses instead of increasing amount of open source software simply prevents its usage in the commercial software. The current trend with programming languages is going for higher level ones which are much easier to reverse engineer or require barely any reverse engineering. There are also plenty examples where copyright law get's used to prevent doing anything near the product containing closed source software not even directly modifying the software in situations where people are willing to spend the effort for creating new software or do the reverse engineering. Stuff like John Deer preventing repairs because you own the tractor but not the software. Cricut (vinyl cutter maker) preventing creation of third party desktop software for using their hardware because that would somehow violate copyrights of their firmware. Preventing commercial software from using open source libraries isn't the goal of Free Software. It's a middle finger for copyright law doing the same in opposite direction. The idea is that benefits of being able to freely modify and distribute any software might be might outweigh the few cases where software vendor decided instead of not using the GPL library to make their whole software open source. We can only speculate how it would play out in long term. Would more commercial software be written using C++ instead of javascript and electron? Would more software be server side only? Would obfuscation be more widely used? Or would everyone accept that that's the norm, which wouldn't be that different from how things were in the early days of computers. I don't doubt that if copyright was suddenly one day canceled companies would use every possibility to claw back privileges they had before. Once something is given it's hard to take away.