3 ms·

> 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 t

> 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 24d 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 24d 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 24d 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 23d 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.
      - ndriscoll 23d ago
        Okay, but nobody can pay a random software engineer to go take the Apple driver's code and use it to make a working Linux driver that they can use on the hardware they purchased. So Apple's monopoly on their source code is not incentivizing any creation (they had to write it anyway to make the hardware useful), and is in fact disincentivizing it (now if someone wants e.g. a Linux or Windows driver, they need to undertake the previously monumental task of also reverse engineering the hardware, which is much more difficult than the original software creation). And product tying (requiring that if you want to buy Apple's hardware you must also use their software) is an anti-competitive practice that harms society, which is why I oppose it. The world is a better place when you can plug your Dell monitor into your Apple computer and it just works. It's also a better place when you can buy your operating system from Canonical if you'd like to run on your Apple computer. It means we all have more choice. Even if Apple doesn't want to have any part in making that work, we should say they have to release the necessary information to let you pay someone else to do it if you'd like, or at least let people re-use whatever they do get from Apple to make it work (e.g. look at what Apple's binary code does). As I said, it's a basic consumer protection requirement for the 21st century where everything has software now. Society gains literally nothing from letting them have a monopoly on software necessary for their hardware to run, so why give it to them?
userbinator 24d ago
others would be free to take it and give you nothing And that's fine, because I'm being paid to provide a service, actual labour (which might admittedly involve prompting an LLM), but it's still doing something new. There's tons of people being paid to work on OSS, and much of which would still exist by volunteer effort alone.
- otterley 24d ago
  > There's tons of people being paid to work on OSS, and much of which would still exist by volunteer effort alone. Those people are largely working on OSS as a hobby or for clout, i.e., to kickstart their career; or, they're working on a loss leader that will (if history is any indication) eventually lead to a license rug pull when they find out GPL/BSD/MIT licenes aren't a path to riches. I'll concede that hobby projects that have led to Linux, programming languages, etc. do provide valuable connective tissue to the world, but most of the stuff that appeals to the end user isn't OSS. > I'm being paid to provide a service If you're like most of us, you're likely being paid to provide a service that depends on copyright as a foundation. Ask your company's lawyer their opinion on what the company would do if your work wasn't protected by it, or if someone broke into your company's source code repos and stole it.

ndriscoll 24d 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 24d 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 24d 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 23d 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.
    - ndriscoll 23d ago
      Okay, but nobody can pay a random software engineer to go take the Apple driver's code and use it to make a working Linux driver that they can use on the hardware they purchased. So Apple's monopoly on their source code is not incentivizing any creation (they had to write it anyway to make the hardware useful), and is in fact disincentivizing it (now if someone wants e.g. a Linux or Windows driver, they need to undertake the previously monumental task of also reverse engineering the hardware, which is much more difficult than the original software creation). And product tying (requiring that if you want to buy Apple's hardware you must also use their software) is an anti-competitive practice that harms society, which is why I oppose it. The world is a better place when you can plug your Dell monitor into your Apple computer and it just works. It's also a better place when you can buy your operating system from Canonical if you'd like to run on your Apple computer. It means we all have more choice. Even if Apple doesn't want to have any part in making that work, we should say they have to release the necessary information to let you pay someone else to do it if you'd like, or at least let people re-use whatever they do get from Apple to make it work (e.g. look at what Apple's binary code does). As I said, it's a basic consumer protection requirement for the 21st century where everything has software now. Society gains literally nothing from letting them have a monopoly on software necessary for their hardware to run, so why give it to them?

userbinator 24d ago

others would be free to take it and give you nothing And that's fine, because I'm being paid to provide a service, actual labour (which might admittedly involve prompting an LLM), but it's still doing something new. There's tons of people being paid to work on OSS, and much of which would still exist by volunteer effort alone.

otterley 24d ago
> There's tons of people being paid to work on OSS, and much of which would still exist by volunteer effort alone. Those people are largely working on OSS as a hobby or for clout, i.e., to kickstart their career; or, they're working on a loss leader that will (if history is any indication) eventually lead to a license rug pull when they find out GPL/BSD/MIT licenes aren't a path to riches. I'll concede that hobby projects that have led to Linux, programming languages, etc. do provide valuable connective tissue to the world, but most of the stuff that appeals to the end user isn't OSS. > I'm being paid to provide a service If you're like most of us, you're likely being paid to provide a service that depends on copyright as a foundation. Ask your company's lawyer their opinion on what the company would do if your work wasn't protected by it, or if someone broke into your company's source code repos and stole it.