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I write software for a living and think we should abolish software copyright, and furthermore, source availability should be a basic consumer protection require

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 18d ago
And you don’t think abolishing copyright would impact your career or your ability to feed your family?
- ndriscoll 18d 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 18d 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 18d 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 17d 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 17d 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).
        otterley 17d 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 On the contrary, Apple engineers--paid professionals--wrote the driver to make MacOS work with the integrated GPU. I don't know why you think not writing a driver for Linux is proof of anything, other than that Apple does not care one whit about Linux. They have no interest in that. They build integrated computer systems (hardware + software); to build them for Linux is, to them, an utter waste of resources. > 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 That's right. Builders of things get control over what they build. That control is designed to maximize profit, which is a strong motivator for building novel and useful things. If you don't like what they're building, buy something else, or build something better! That's how capitalism is supposed to work.
- deleted 18d ago
  [deleted]

otterley 18d ago

And you don’t think abolishing copyright would impact your career or your ability to feed your family?

ndriscoll 18d 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 18d 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 18d 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 17d 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 17d 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).
        otterley 17d 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 On the contrary, Apple engineers--paid professionals--wrote the driver to make MacOS work with the integrated GPU. I don't know why you think not writing a driver for Linux is proof of anything, other than that Apple does not care one whit about Linux. They have no interest in that. They build integrated computer systems (hardware + software); to build them for Linux is, to them, an utter waste of resources. > 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 That's right. Builders of things get control over what they build. That control is designed to maximize profit, which is a strong motivator for building novel and useful things. If you don't like what they're building, buy something else, or build something better! That's how capitalism is supposed to work.
deleted 18d ago
[deleted]