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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

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 27d 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.
- ralferoo 24d ago
  From the top of my head, the easiest examples are games. Where I live at least, there are still physical stores in most malls with loads of disc-based games for sale. But also, for instance, I can go into my local computer store and pick up a boxed copy of Windows, so yes physical software sales is definitely still a thing. I personally haven't done it for a long time, but I know it exists. But anyway, the method of software delivery is tangential to the main point. Plenty of software exists that runs locally, regardless of how is paid for - whether subscription or one-off purchases, if it runs on your computer it relies on copyright law to protect the revenue stream for the developers. Without copyright laws, if one physical sale could be freely copied with impunity, sales would be vastly diminished to the point that many developers would just not bother and find a different industry to work in to earn a salary.

brainwad 27d 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.

ralferoo 24d ago
From the top of my head, the easiest examples are games. Where I live at least, there are still physical stores in most malls with loads of disc-based games for sale. But also, for instance, I can go into my local computer store and pick up a boxed copy of Windows, so yes physical software sales is definitely still a thing. I personally haven't done it for a long time, but I know it exists. But anyway, the method of software delivery is tangential to the main point. Plenty of software exists that runs locally, regardless of how is paid for - whether subscription or one-off purchases, if it runs on your computer it relies on copyright law to protect the revenue stream for the developers. Without copyright laws, if one physical sale could be freely copied with impunity, sales would be vastly diminished to the point that many developers would just not bother and find a different industry to work in to earn a salary.