I've always been fascinated by the FSF's interplay with IP law. Mostly because of the 'copyleft' hack, which is the core underpinning of the GPL and, by extension, GNU.
If you didn't have IP law at all, what you'd have is effectively public domain, without even the 'moral right' of attribution of authorship.
The kinds of systems you'd be able to build with that would resemble BSD codes, not GPL codes. This would suffice for open-source software, to be sure, but not for Free software with all the political trappings that it brings [1].
In much the same way as DRM aims to restrict what you can do with the bits and bytes of media and code in favor of the 'IP holders', copyleft aims to restrict what you can do with the bits and bytes of source and even binary codes in favor of the 'IP users'.
While the class of set of people benefiting from IP is different, it all still relies on IP.
I believe that copyright law should be abolished. (Eventually, slowly, responsibly.) While I release some works as CC0 [1], I still use the GPLv3+ on much source code because it's the best way to protect freedom given the existing system. This isn't a dichotomy nor hypocritical.
I would prefer for the GPL and other copyright licenses to be unenforcable; unfortunately that isn't the case. So I prefer not to BSD-license my works because then copyright could be used against me to take my rights from me.
BSD-ish licenses are "permissive", in that you can release modifications/derivatives of the work (in binary or source) that restrict how those modified versions are distributed.
e.g. I write a BSD-licensed song, and someone remixes that song and says that I cannot copy the remixed version.
Thats one of the most common argument against the concept of copyright. They say: How does a copy take away any of the authors rights? The original work is still there regardless how many copies are made by p2p file sharing.
Which has been stated before in this comment thread. If we abolish copyright, GPL is not needed. If we keep copyright (and thus accept the concept of derivative copies effecting the author), then GPL request freedom.
Please pick one. We should not cherry pick the arguments depending if one is talking about copyright or GPL. The same argument can't be false and true at the same time in the same mind.
The original exists, but the modified versions that are now prevalent are works that do not grant me my rights. I have contributed to the arsenal of my adversaries; my works have become part of the works that deny me rights that I consider important, the right to share and remix.
Whereas when copyright is abolished, if I have the song I can copy the song. They cannot put terms on it that would withhold my freedom to do so. I don't really need the GPL anymore; I don't demand anyone's source code, just my freedoms with the knowledge and information that is available to me.
> I prefer not to BSD-license my works because then copyright could be used against me to take my rights from me
I agree with you about GPL now vs. ideally no copyright, but one thing that would definitely be lost is the ability to coerce releasing source code. Companies in a hypothetical no-copyright future could still keep source code secret, and still release compiled/obfuscated software. They could still take code others had released, make modifications, and then only release obfuscated binaries. They wouldn't be able to sue if someone leaked the source code, but is that enough of a protection?
Personally, I'm willing to live with it, because I think in the long run people would rather share. But from, say, RMS's point of view, people are losing some measurable level of protection.
I really do value individual freedom. If I have access to some data, I want the freedom to share it. If I have some data, I want the freedom to not share it as well. "You must share the software" is not the world I want.
Legal requirements to share, would actually make it a burden to provide anything: If I give my friend this disk, am I legally required to give them something else along with the disk? If my computer is accessible on a network, do I have a legal obligation to make any source code that is accessible also available? What are the rules about that?
I think it's too messy. And honestly, if a kid writes a game, maybe they're embarassed about the source code... the law shouldn't require them to share that with their friends/teachers/etc.
Although there might be merit to regulations on industry / corporate actions, especially in so far as their works affect the public (voting machines, safety equipment: software that we might want to require keeps its source-code alongside binary distributions).
I'm much more comfortable with people keeping data to themselves in a world where they have less legal ability to prevent others from sharing it.
These are non-issues. The idea is not "share all data". If we copy the GPL model, all you need to share is the source code to any program you distribute in an uneditable form, and then only when someone asks for it (at which point you may charge a reasonable processing fee for the trouble). It's really not that onerous. No one is making you share your private software.
For "software" replace "food" and for "source code" replace "ingredients". You can cook whatever you want at home, but when you start selling food to people certain responsibilities kick in. If a kid is selling lemonade but is too embarrassed to tell you what's in it, would you drink it?
> ideally no copyright, but one thing that would definitely be lost is the ability to coerce releasing source code
Would not "definitely" be lost. It's easy to imagine other regulation which coerces releasing source code (indeed more powerfully, as not relying on copyright holder to both choose the right license and enforce it), if indeed that is a socially valuable thing to do.
But presumably you'd also be able to reverse-engineer the binaries much more freely (currently the DMCA prohibits most of those activities), so the market for source code would have a lot more players than just the original owner. Consider the interplay between Wine and Microsoft; in the absence of IP, Wine would probably be a lot more feature-ful and popular, perhaps even driving Microsoft out of business.
I have a hard time parsing your argument in the context of the original post. FSF is not against all forms of copyright. FSF is against all forms of software patents, and believes copyright should be more limited and sharing in particular should be completely legalized.
What FSF is particularly against, in this post, is combining, arguably completely separate, trademark laws, copyright laws, patent laws, and trade secret laws, under a useless umbrella term "Intellectual Property" which can be leveraged for propaganda purposes and is of little real use.
Forced transparency does not need to rely on copyright. If it is a good idea, it should be advocated as consumer, competition or procurement regulation, applied to all software.
Calling a turd "transparency regulation" instead of "intellectual property" is just changing the name of the same thing.
Under any copyleft type of regime, even if you remove copyright and replace with some other enabling law, you're still using legal controls to enforce rights management of bits and bytes.
Not the same thing. The copyleft hack on copyright is enforced by copyright holders, thus property (or whatever word wishes to use if not "property") based. Other easily imagined mechanisms for forcing transparency/source revelation would have no relation to copyright nor any other kind of property; I wouldn't call them copyleft any more than I'd call forced transparency in other domains (e.g., finance) copyleft.
Such would still be "using legal controls" (or more broadly "using policy controls", as in the case of procurement, which could be private) but not necessarily to "enforce rights management of bits and bytes". The legal controls could be for example around certification of a product: no source, no certification, no legally selling product. In that case the bits and bytes independent of a product on the market would be unregulated, not subject to forced transparency.
> The legal controls could be for example around certification of a product: no source, no certification, no legally selling product.
GPL forbids giving away infringing code as well.
Does your proposed regulatory regime also encompass forcing all open-source and hobby coders to get one of your licenses before they can enable the "download as ZIP" feature on their GitHub?
Could, probably wouldn't. Just as consumer, competition, procurement and other regulation typically doesn't cover hobbyists. I'd call that a feature -- more effective enforcement for commercial entities, hobbyists can ignore. Contrast with copyright hack, applies to all, commercial entities can ignore without consequence.
If you didn't have IP law at all, what you'd have is effectively public domain, without even the 'moral right' of attribution of authorship.
The kinds of systems you'd be able to build with that would resemble BSD codes, not GPL codes. This would suffice for open-source software, to be sure, but not for Free software with all the political trappings that it brings [1].
In much the same way as DRM aims to restrict what you can do with the bits and bytes of media and code in favor of the 'IP holders', copyleft aims to restrict what you can do with the bits and bytes of source and even binary codes in favor of the 'IP users'.
While the class of set of people benefiting from IP is different, it all still relies on IP.
[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-copyleft.html