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Most hackers here are not relying on copyright to make their living. Either you work on open source but make your living off services on top of the code, or you

Most hackers here are not relying on copyright to make their living. Either you work on open source but make your living off services on top of the code, or your code is a trade secret protected via contracts. Not to mention that everyone using coding agents probably aren't even protected by copyright in the first place, at least in the US, since the courts are taking a pretty hard line on human authorship being required...

ralferoo 21d ago
"your code is a trade secret protected via contracts" isn't enough to replace copyright because the contracts are only enforceable to the signing parties. Let's say you write some software for your employer and they sell the product to several customers with a contract not to distribute it. However, the product appears on some pirate website anyway, and you can't identify who allowed the product to be leaked. Once it's there, your contracts are worthless as nobody who downloads it from the pirate site will be bound by your contract. You need copyright laws to prevent subsequent distribution. Without copyright laws, you'd then end up in the situation where people who paid for the software then are bound by the contract and would have to keep paying, and those who just downloaded it from a pirate site would be completely fine legally and could use the software with impunity. That would create a disincentive for anybody agreeing to buy the software and entering into a contract in the first place, essentially killing the industry. You might not see a problem with that if you believe in Open Source, but most licences require copyright laws to exist to protect the software freedoms so that people don't just take the software and close source it.
- brainwad 21d ago
  Yeah, I'm assuming most people here aren't selling proprietary code to customers directly. I assume most professionals here work somewhere that sells SaaS or uses the software they develop internally only.
  - otterley 21d ago
    That is a false assumption.
  - loup-vaillant 21d ago
    If I recall correctly most software work goes to custom software. Note that in many, possibly most, cases, the (sole) customer retains the exclusive rights to the source code, making the software effectively Free per the FSF definition (because the user is free). Almost my entire career was spent on such custom software. The rest was internal software. And even that one I was doing as a contractor, so in a way we could argue it was custom software even there.
  - ralferoo 20d ago
    Even if they don't sell the code to the customers directly (or even binaries, because that's what most customers actually care about), somebody in the chain is selling that software to the end customer and that money is going up the chain. It's kind of obvious really - if the work you're doing isn't creating saleable value, then your company won't be able to pay you. But there is far, far more in the world that just SaaS or internal only software. Sure, companies are generally shifting towards SaaS (in part because it allows them another way to combat piracy, but also to extract recurring revenue rather than one off purchases), but there's still plenty of software you can go out to the shop and buy. Most of that wouldn't exist without copyright laws, because those developers would have found some other way of making a living instead.
    - brainwad 20d ago
      > somebody in the chain is selling that software to the end customer Not necessarily? Any infra software is invisible to the end consumer. It's bundled into the price the customer pays for what they see, but they themselves don't know or care about the former. > there's still plenty of software you can go out to the shop and buy ... is there? I haven't bought software in a shop in 20 years at least. Outside of games, I don't really buy software digitally, even. It's either FOSS or it's a subscription.
      - 17d ago
otterley 21d ago
Free Software as a concept could not exist without copyright. Copyright is what allows the license to declare the terms under which a copy is permitted, including the provision that the source code ship with the binary form. (This is discussed in the commentary to the GPL.) Despite the SaaS model under which many of us build, there is still a tremendous amount of packaged and distributed software that people use every day: your phone and its OS and apps, most computer OSes, databases, medical records, transportation, communications—the list goes on—that many of us work on to put food on the table.
- brainwad 21d ago
  Copyleft software couldn't exist. But all software would be free by default, because all source would be in the public domain, and all reverse compilation of binaries would produce public domain code.
  - otterley 21d ago
    Sure, but if all software is in the public domain, then the profit motive for developing software will be completely wiped out, and much less will be produced as a result. Software development be reduced to a hobby or developers will have to seek out patronage like artists did in the 1600s. That’s not a world that most of us want to return to.
    - loup-vaillant 21d ago
      Or have a universal income. Capitalism isn't inevitable. And it will end anyway, at it hits planetary limits. Better start thinking of alternatives before one of the worst ones gets imposed on us.
      - WrongSideWon 21d ago
        [flagged]
    - brainwad 21d ago

ralferoo 21d ago

"your code is a trade secret protected via contracts" isn't enough to replace copyright because the contracts are only enforceable to the signing parties. Let's say you write some software for your employer and they sell the product to several customers with a contract not to distribute it. However, the product appears on some pirate website anyway, and you can't identify who allowed the product to be leaked. Once it's there, your contracts are worthless as nobody who downloads it from the pirate site will be bound by your contract. You need copyright laws to prevent subsequent distribution. Without copyright laws, you'd then end up in the situation where people who paid for the software then are bound by the contract and would have to keep paying, and those who just downloaded it from a pirate site would be completely fine legally and could use the software with impunity. That would create a disincentive for anybody agreeing to buy the software and entering into a contract in the first place, essentially killing the industry. You might not see a problem with that if you believe in Open Source, but most licences require copyright laws to exist to protect the software freedoms so that people don't just take the software and close source it.

brainwad 21d ago
Yeah, I'm assuming most people here aren't selling proprietary code to customers directly. I assume most professionals here work somewhere that sells SaaS or uses the software they develop internally only.
- otterley 21d ago
  That is a false assumption.
- loup-vaillant 21d ago
  If I recall correctly most software work goes to custom software. Note that in many, possibly most, cases, the (sole) customer retains the exclusive rights to the source code, making the software effectively Free per the FSF definition (because the user is free). Almost my entire career was spent on such custom software. The rest was internal software. And even that one I was doing as a contractor, so in a way we could argue it was custom software even there.
- ralferoo 20d ago
  Even if they don't sell the code to the customers directly (or even binaries, because that's what most customers actually care about), somebody in the chain is selling that software to the end customer and that money is going up the chain. It's kind of obvious really - if the work you're doing isn't creating saleable value, then your company won't be able to pay you. But there is far, far more in the world that just SaaS or internal only software. Sure, companies are generally shifting towards SaaS (in part because it allows them another way to combat piracy, but also to extract recurring revenue rather than one off purchases), but there's still plenty of software you can go out to the shop and buy. Most of that wouldn't exist without copyright laws, because those developers would have found some other way of making a living instead.
  - brainwad 20d ago
    > somebody in the chain is selling that software to the end customer Not necessarily? Any infra software is invisible to the end consumer. It's bundled into the price the customer pays for what they see, but they themselves don't know or care about the former. > there's still plenty of software you can go out to the shop and buy ... is there? I haven't bought software in a shop in 20 years at least. Outside of games, I don't really buy software digitally, even. It's either FOSS or it's a subscription.
    - 17d ago

otterley 21d ago

Free Software as a concept could not exist without copyright. Copyright is what allows the license to declare the terms under which a copy is permitted, including the provision that the source code ship with the binary form. (This is discussed in the commentary to the GPL.) Despite the SaaS model under which many of us build, there is still a tremendous amount of packaged and distributed software that people use every day: your phone and its OS and apps, most computer OSes, databases, medical records, transportation, communications—the list goes on—that many of us work on to put food on the table.

brainwad 21d ago
Copyleft software couldn't exist. But all software would be free by default, because all source would be in the public domain, and all reverse compilation of binaries would produce public domain code.
- otterley 21d ago
  Sure, but if all software is in the public domain, then the profit motive for developing software will be completely wiped out, and much less will be produced as a result. Software development be reduced to a hobby or developers will have to seek out patronage like artists did in the 1600s. That’s not a world that most of us want to return to.
  - loup-vaillant 21d ago
    Or have a universal income. Capitalism isn't inevitable. And it will end anyway, at it hits planetary limits. Better start thinking of alternatives before one of the worst ones gets imposed on us.
    - WrongSideWon 21d ago
      [flagged]
  - brainwad 21d ago