> Even if the community could not legally force people to play fair with open source code (by releasing modifications, not charging, or whatever the terms are),

> Even if the community could not legally force people to play fair with open source code (by releasing modifications, not charging, or whatever the terms are), people would still continue to write it. There was a reason I made clear to mention GPL advocates. There are differing definitions of "software freedom" that target the developers of software and the users of software. When your political movement aims to ensure that the source code for the software that people are using is actually available and stays available then you need something like copyleft. If your idea is instead to ensure that people are free to release source code for free if they wish, then there's not actually a battle to be had! That was how software started out after all, but that was also what led eventually to users being closed off from their source code. RMS explains it better than I can: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.h...