5 ms·

Simplistically yes, because many see copyright as the thing that protects corporate interest from the social hacker. The reality of course is more complicated.

Simplistically yes, because many see copyright as the thing that protects corporate interest from the social hacker. The reality of course is more complicated. Without copyright there's no GPL. Which I guess is fine if you're in the OSS camp more than the FSF camp. MIT and BSD licenses basically (functionally) give up copyright. Copyright is also what allows for hybrids like the BSL which protect "little guys" from large cloud providers like AWS etc. Copyright allows VC startups to at least start out life as Open Source (before pivoting later.) Of course thus is all in the context of software copyright. Other copyrights (music, books etc) are equally nuanced. And there are other forms of IP protections as well (patents, trademarks) which are distinct from the copyright concept. So no, I don't think most people here are against copyright (patents are a different story.)

ronsor 1y ago
1. I'm OK with no GPL if there's no copyright, because then proprietary programs can be copied and reverse engineered without restrictions from law or EULAs. 2. I generally don't like the BSL. 3. No comment. I think OSS projects that exist incidentally versus being the company's main product have always been more reliable (and less susceptible to the company pivoting to closed-only offerings). 4. Copyright has perhaps been the most evil in the music industry; books, less so. I'd rather not even talk about movies or TV right now. Nonetheless, I'd tolerate an extremely limited duration copyright, if no copyright at all isn't an option. 5. Trademarks are mostly fine, because they're primarily supposed to serve customers, not the companies. I'd like to get rid of patents now, however.
tokai 1y ago
GPL was always about fighting the system with its own tools. The end goal is not good licenses but free software as a baseline.
- kelnos 1y ago
  How else would you enforce Free Software, though? Without copyright, I cannot release the source to my software and require anything of any recipient. It would be nice of FOSS was the baseline, but I don't see that ever happening, especially in a world without an enforcement mechanism.
  - Karliss 1y ago
    That's the thing you don't need to enforce anything if there is no law which forbids you from doing things. It's the copyright law which restricts you from doing most of the things that GPL license gives you permission. GPL gives you back the rights to copy, modify, create derivative works and redistribute any GPL licensed software you receive. Without copyright law you could copy, modify, create derivative works and redistribute any software you receive. Sure having source code would be nice, but then again half the software nowadays is using electron and written in javascript anyway. Also plenty of examples of hardware manufacturers using software/firmware copyright as excuse and making legal threats to people who have made their own software to control hardware they bought even though they didn't have access to original source code. There are probably more examples of people reverse engineering an reimplementing or decompiling large nontrivial software than there examples of companies making their whole software open source due to using a GPL licensed library (as opposed to avoiding the GPL licensed code or violating the GPL by not releasing the source code).
    - martin-t 1y ago
      > companies making their whole software open source due to using a GPL licensed library Does not mean that GPL is ineffective. IT forces them to reimplement the functionality, thus giving copyleft more time to compete with them. Imagine if they were to free to take all public code and just use it. They would always be ahead and open source products wouldn't stand a chance competing. Not to mention I feel like GPL being so strong is why big companies pretend to love open source but permissive licenses so much - to drown out the GPL competition they hate so much and to attract more developers to permissive rather than copyleft open source projects.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > you don't need to enforce anything if there is no law which forbids you from doing things This is extend-and-extinguish on rails. Raise capital, hire a team to fork a public project, develop is closed and only release inscrutable blobs. Add a marketing budget and you get to piggyback on the open-source project while keeping the monetisation.
globular-toast 1y ago
> MIT and BSD licenses basically (functionally) give up copyright. MIT/BSD is like putting pristine steel out in the rain. Rust will get to it before long. GPL is like painting it to protect it for generations to come.

ronsor 1y ago

1. I'm OK with no GPL if there's no copyright, because then proprietary programs can be copied and reverse engineered without restrictions from law or EULAs. 2. I generally don't like the BSL. 3. No comment. I think OSS projects that exist incidentally versus being the company's main product have always been more reliable (and less susceptible to the company pivoting to closed-only offerings). 4. Copyright has perhaps been the most evil in the music industry; books, less so. I'd rather not even talk about movies or TV right now. Nonetheless, I'd tolerate an extremely limited duration copyright, if no copyright at all isn't an option. 5. Trademarks are mostly fine, because they're primarily supposed to serve customers, not the companies. I'd like to get rid of patents now, however.

tokai 1y ago

GPL was always about fighting the system with its own tools. The end goal is not good licenses but free software as a baseline.

kelnos 1y ago
How else would you enforce Free Software, though? Without copyright, I cannot release the source to my software and require anything of any recipient. It would be nice of FOSS was the baseline, but I don't see that ever happening, especially in a world without an enforcement mechanism.
- Karliss 1y ago
  That's the thing you don't need to enforce anything if there is no law which forbids you from doing things. It's the copyright law which restricts you from doing most of the things that GPL license gives you permission. GPL gives you back the rights to copy, modify, create derivative works and redistribute any GPL licensed software you receive. Without copyright law you could copy, modify, create derivative works and redistribute any software you receive. Sure having source code would be nice, but then again half the software nowadays is using electron and written in javascript anyway. Also plenty of examples of hardware manufacturers using software/firmware copyright as excuse and making legal threats to people who have made their own software to control hardware they bought even though they didn't have access to original source code. There are probably more examples of people reverse engineering an reimplementing or decompiling large nontrivial software than there examples of companies making their whole software open source due to using a GPL licensed library (as opposed to avoiding the GPL licensed code or violating the GPL by not releasing the source code).
  - martin-t 1y ago
    > companies making their whole software open source due to using a GPL licensed library Does not mean that GPL is ineffective. IT forces them to reimplement the functionality, thus giving copyleft more time to compete with them. Imagine if they were to free to take all public code and just use it. They would always be ahead and open source products wouldn't stand a chance competing. Not to mention I feel like GPL being so strong is why big companies pretend to love open source but permissive licenses so much - to drown out the GPL competition they hate so much and to attract more developers to permissive rather than copyleft open source projects.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > you don't need to enforce anything if there is no law which forbids you from doing things This is extend-and-extinguish on rails. Raise capital, hire a team to fork a public project, develop is closed and only release inscrutable blobs. Add a marketing budget and you get to piggyback on the open-source project while keeping the monetisation.

globular-toast 1y ago

> MIT and BSD licenses basically (functionally) give up copyright. MIT/BSD is like putting pristine steel out in the rain. Rust will get to it before long. GPL is like painting it to protect it for generations to come.