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I don't give a flying fuck. Ignoring the idiocy of Imaginary Property is how China is winning. It's time we caught up and then leap ahead. Everything is a der

I don't give a flying fuck. Ignoring the idiocy of Imaginary Property is how China is winning. It's time we caught up and then leap ahead. Everything is a derivative work.

otterley 10d ago
So, what do you do for a living?
- Dylan16807 10d ago
  If you're going to make some kind of argument about the benefits of copyright for preserving software jobs, keep in mind this is a driver for hardware apple sells. Everyone would be better off if drivers were mandatory open source.
  - deleted 10d ago
    [deleted]
- ndriscoll 10d ago
  I write software for a living and think we should abolish software copyright, and furthermore, source availability should be a basic consumer protection requirement. Basically the free software definition should be law.
  - otterley 10d ago
    And you don’t think abolishing copyright would impact your career or your ability to feed your family?
    - ndriscoll 10d ago
      Of course I think it would change things. You think I haven't considered that? But I also think society would be a better place if we worked to produce new software that people desire instead of gatekeeping what already exists, and if the law banned this one-sided gatekeeping. The goal of all people should be to build lasting wealth for the next generation to inherit, not to hoard what is naturally infinite. Plumbers don't extract subscription fees from your use of the toilet. Electricians don't get a fee for your use of a light fixture. They don't get a monopoly on fixing your things because you bought it through them. The whole idea of IP is absurd. It should be the opposite: anyone should always be free to go to someone else if they become unhappy with us, taking the work they bought from us with them. The law should bar any attempts to stop them/build roadblocks. Happily, I see LLMs have great potential to make everything effectively FOSS now anyway, so all we really need is regulations against anti-competitive behavior like requiring signed firmware.
      - otterley 10d ago
        > I also think society would be a better place if we worked to produce new software that people desire That's the entire point of copyright -- to incentivize this work by conveying ownership to those who produce such software. Without ownership, others would be free to take it and give you nothing. The world doesn't work for free. I doubt you do, either.
        ndriscoll 10d ago
        That's the ostensible point, and I think does the job extremely poorly, and is often if not usually counterproductive. Without payment, there'd be nothing to take, since as you say, the world doesn't work for free. Software either has some functional purpose, so people will pay to see its creation (e.g. device drivers; no one will buy your hardware if there's no software for it to do anything), or it exists as e.g. art, in which case patronage avoids the damage of copyright. Either way, if you want to incentivize creation, then you should want a system where payment is for creation, and where further creation (e.g. paying a different developer to modify it) is freely allowed. Copyright is a system where people pay to rent, so once it's created you can rest on your laurels forever unless someone undertakes the inefficiency of recreating the same thing for no reason before they can add to it.
        otterley 10d ago
        > if you want to incentivize creation, then you should want a system where payment is for creation, and where further creation (e.g. paying a different developer to modify it) is freely allowed. Why is that? I would think that the possibility of exclusivity over derivative works is an even greater incentive to creation.
        ndriscoll 9d ago
        And yet we have proof right in front of us that e.g. Apple will not port their GPU drivers to Linux, and people had to reverse engineer it, so clearly the evidence says it does not create that incentive. In fact, copyright law for software is quite frequently used to manipulate and control appliance owners or end-users, even when the software itself is not really "the point" of the thing (e.g. putting ads and spyware in cars or locking out the ability of the owner to use their heated seats).
    - deleted 10d ago
      [deleted]

I don't give a flying fuck. Ignoring the idiocy of Imaginary Property is how China is winning. It's time we caught up and then leap ahead. Everything is a derivative work.

otterley 10d ago

So, what do you do for a living?

Dylan16807 10d ago
If you're going to make some kind of argument about the benefits of copyright for preserving software jobs, keep in mind this is a driver for hardware apple sells. Everyone would be better off if drivers were mandatory open source.
- deleted 10d ago
  [deleted]
ndriscoll 10d ago
I write software for a living and think we should abolish software copyright, and furthermore, source availability should be a basic consumer protection requirement. Basically the free software definition should be law.
- otterley 10d ago
  And you don’t think abolishing copyright would impact your career or your ability to feed your family?
  - ndriscoll 10d ago
    Of course I think it would change things. You think I haven't considered that? But I also think society would be a better place if we worked to produce new software that people desire instead of gatekeeping what already exists, and if the law banned this one-sided gatekeeping. The goal of all people should be to build lasting wealth for the next generation to inherit, not to hoard what is naturally infinite. Plumbers don't extract subscription fees from your use of the toilet. Electricians don't get a fee for your use of a light fixture. They don't get a monopoly on fixing your things because you bought it through them. The whole idea of IP is absurd. It should be the opposite: anyone should always be free to go to someone else if they become unhappy with us, taking the work they bought from us with them. The law should bar any attempts to stop them/build roadblocks. Happily, I see LLMs have great potential to make everything effectively FOSS now anyway, so all we really need is regulations against anti-competitive behavior like requiring signed firmware.
    - otterley 10d ago
      > I also think society would be a better place if we worked to produce new software that people desire That's the entire point of copyright -- to incentivize this work by conveying ownership to those who produce such software. Without ownership, others would be free to take it and give you nothing. The world doesn't work for free. I doubt you do, either.
      - ndriscoll 10d ago
        That's the ostensible point, and I think does the job extremely poorly, and is often if not usually counterproductive. Without payment, there'd be nothing to take, since as you say, the world doesn't work for free. Software either has some functional purpose, so people will pay to see its creation (e.g. device drivers; no one will buy your hardware if there's no software for it to do anything), or it exists as e.g. art, in which case patronage avoids the damage of copyright. Either way, if you want to incentivize creation, then you should want a system where payment is for creation, and where further creation (e.g. paying a different developer to modify it) is freely allowed. Copyright is a system where people pay to rent, so once it's created you can rest on your laurels forever unless someone undertakes the inefficiency of recreating the same thing for no reason before they can add to it.
        otterley 10d ago
        > if you want to incentivize creation, then you should want a system where payment is for creation, and where further creation (e.g. paying a different developer to modify it) is freely allowed. Why is that? I would think that the possibility of exclusivity over derivative works is an even greater incentive to creation.
        ndriscoll 9d ago
        And yet we have proof right in front of us that e.g. Apple will not port their GPU drivers to Linux, and people had to reverse engineer it, so clearly the evidence says it does not create that incentive. In fact, copyright law for software is quite frequently used to manipulate and control appliance owners or end-users, even when the software itself is not really "the point" of the thing (e.g. putting ads and spyware in cars or locking out the ability of the owner to use their heated seats).
  - deleted 10d ago
    [deleted]