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"The solution here is to abolish copyright" If you abolish copyright, then open source licenses cease mattering. The GPL only works because a corporation can

by olliej 3y ago

"The solution here is to abolish copyright" If you abolish copyright, then open source licenses cease mattering. The GPL only works because a corporation can only use GPL software if it agrees to the license, but if there is no copyright then there is nothing for the license to gate access to. Alternatively if you take the more recent argument that "the GPL is a contract not a license", then the contract also does not work because a core component of contract law is that a contract must have some kind of reasonable exchange and if there's no copyright the source software has no value (IANAL but the gist as I understand it is you can't have a contract that exchanges something for nothing). If you think software is bad now, wait until every piece of software, even the non-game ones, basically operates in the cloud so you never get direct access to any of the actual software because if you can download and run it locally you can give it to anyone. You also ensure that authors of music and books cannot make money, because they have no ownership of the work they produce. What your copyright-free world does is give a huge advantage to corporations with huge amounts of cash over pretty much everyone else.

_Algernon_ 3y ago
>What your copyright-free world does is give a huge advantage to corporations with huge amounts of cash over pretty much everyone else. At worst maintaining the status quo, in other words.
- olliej 3y ago
  Um no? Plenty of individual developers currently earn their living writing single apps. In the lack of copyright, a corporation can just directly include that developer's software in the products they sell. The only way for such a developer to make a living is to go and work directly for those corporations. You may say "well I can just copy their software", except of course the large corporations are able to afford the server infrastructure for licensing servers, DRM nonsense, and the gradual movement of all software onto their infrastructure. People pirate MS office because it's possible, they don't pirate google docs because they literally can't. If you're a developer trying to make a living selling software without working for a corporation, you would now need to be able to afford enough always online hardware to support all your customers. You can't sell your product and move on, now you have ongoing costs, so it even becomes a question as to whether you can have single purchase price or you have to switch to subscription software. The other alternative you have is to switch to the google advertising+spying business model, but that requires scale, so you're going to have to be selling your customer information to google, etc now. Copyright exists so that you can create something, and earn a living from selling it. If you cannot earn a living from it, your only option is to work for a person or company who has the capital to support either not charging or running services to ensure people have to pay for it, or that are subsidizing your work from selling other products. If you remove copyright, you roll back the ability of many people to make income directly by a few centuries. Basically you're saying "if you aren't constructing something that physically exists it has no value, so you better find an employer or patron".

by olliej 3y ago

_Algernon_ 3y ago

>What your copyright-free world does is give a huge advantage to corporations with huge amounts of cash over pretty much everyone else. At worst maintaining the status quo, in other words.

olliej 3y ago
Um no? Plenty of individual developers currently earn their living writing single apps. In the lack of copyright, a corporation can just directly include that developer's software in the products they sell. The only way for such a developer to make a living is to go and work directly for those corporations. You may say "well I can just copy their software", except of course the large corporations are able to afford the server infrastructure for licensing servers, DRM nonsense, and the gradual movement of all software onto their infrastructure. People pirate MS office because it's possible, they don't pirate google docs because they literally can't. If you're a developer trying to make a living selling software without working for a corporation, you would now need to be able to afford enough always online hardware to support all your customers. You can't sell your product and move on, now you have ongoing costs, so it even becomes a question as to whether you can have single purchase price or you have to switch to subscription software. The other alternative you have is to switch to the google advertising+spying business model, but that requires scale, so you're going to have to be selling your customer information to google, etc now. Copyright exists so that you can create something, and earn a living from selling it. If you cannot earn a living from it, your only option is to work for a person or company who has the capital to support either not charging or running services to ensure people have to pay for it, or that are subsidizing your work from selling other products. If you remove copyright, you roll back the ability of many people to make income directly by a few centuries. Basically you're saying "if you aren't constructing something that physically exists it has no value, so you better find an employer or patron".