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I think you possibly misunderstood the point of the parent. Without copyright law its not possible for the GPL to exist. Specifically the freedoms given by the

I think you possibly misunderstood the point of the parent. Without copyright law its not possible for the GPL to exist. Specifically the freedoms given by the GPL would be meaningless and all (currently GPL) code would be "public domin" and therefore could be used in closed-source projects. So, absent the ability for the author to decide on the license, you are suggesting that, instead, you would require legislation forcing all software producers to release all source code for everything. There is precisely zero chance of that being possible. Never mind the moneyed interests that would rail against it, never mind that it would need international ratification, it would have knock-on effects with regard to trade secrets and so on. In reality, as much as OSS would hate to admit it, the revenues from closed-source are ultimately what drive the OSS movement. The failure of OSS to monetize at scale, the reliance on money from the likes of Google, Meta, Microsoft and so on, show the need for both a copyright system and the fact that some licenses generate more cash than others. OSS and FS allow creators the -choice- of how to license their work, and by extension choose how their work is used. Suggesting that "there should be a law that all software is AGPL" (my interpretation of your suggestion) would meet strong resistance.

ndriscoll 3y ago
There's zero chance of copyright reform either (copyright has also ossified itself through international treaty), so as long as we're discussing "what ought to be", it's worth pointing out that it wouldn't be that crazy to require source code availability as a consumer protection regulation. It's essentially analogous to requiring manufacturers make their service manuals generally available. In fact the whole free software movement was kicked off in response to printer manufacturers making their products impossible to fix, which is still a problem. And fundamentally, it's a right-to-repair issue. The FOSS movement predates all of those companies, and Microsoft was actively hostile toward it for a long time. GNU/Linux, BSD, GNOME, KDE, postgresql, etc. would still be here without them. Plenty of FOSS development could be done as a synergy with other products; e.g. Intel has a good history of this. With adequate consumer protection, all software could be this way (things like games could have copyright on the artistic assets. See e.g. id software). And in a world where all software is FOSS, it would still be a multi trillion dollar industry (perhaps with more of a professional services model) because software automation is simply too valuable not to be created. Anyway, the point is that copyleft is a (well done) hack on the legal system. It's meant to be a practical solution while we advocate to fix the law. It's not an end in itself.

ndriscoll 3y ago

There's zero chance of copyright reform either (copyright has also ossified itself through international treaty), so as long as we're discussing "what ought to be", it's worth pointing out that it wouldn't be that crazy to require source code availability as a consumer protection regulation. It's essentially analogous to requiring manufacturers make their service manuals generally available. In fact the whole free software movement was kicked off in response to printer manufacturers making their products impossible to fix, which is still a problem. And fundamentally, it's a right-to-repair issue. The FOSS movement predates all of those companies, and Microsoft was actively hostile toward it for a long time. GNU/Linux, BSD, GNOME, KDE, postgresql, etc. would still be here without them. Plenty of FOSS development could be done as a synergy with other products; e.g. Intel has a good history of this. With adequate consumer protection, all software could be this way (things like games could have copyright on the artistic assets. See e.g. id software). And in a world where all software is FOSS, it would still be a multi trillion dollar industry (perhaps with more of a professional services model) because software automation is simply too valuable not to be created. Anyway, the point is that copyleft is a (well done) hack on the legal system. It's meant to be a practical solution while we advocate to fix the law. It's not an end in itself.