13 Jan
2013
13 Jan
'13
8:48 p.m.
On Sunday 13 January 2013 11:01:54 Rob wrote:
On 01/13/2013 10:44 AM, drew Roberts wrote:
To free software advocates, it'd be an enormous issue. The right to
redistribute is only freedom #2. Freedom #1 is the right to inspect and
change a program. Many of us could afford to do everything with proprietary
software, but choose free software because we want control over what's
running on our hardware whenever practical. (Or, if you're RMS, even if
it's impractical.) "Free software" and "freeware" are two very
different
things.
You miss the implication of the question of how big an issue it would be.
Could a proprietary software industry survive at anywhere near current levels
without copyright?
If you think so, why was the battle to get software covered by copyright so
hard fought?
Do you not think the malware writers would distribute the binaries despite any
EULAs agreed to by bona fide users?
Do you think click through EULAs would survive without copyright law?
Etc.
there
would also be no way to require anyone to honor my intentions that
my source code be made available to anyone that my software is
distributed to.
This bit is true. But without the corresponding ability to enforce
non-distribution of binaries how big of an issue would this be?
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Of course, the absence of copyright law would not make EULAs go away;
proprietary software makers would just make you sign a contract (which,
depending on which legal venue you're in, can sometimes be effected by
merely opening a box or clicking a link) saying you won't redistribute it
before they distribute the software to you. Advocates of copyleft could do
the same thing, though we'd lose a lot of our advantages over proprietary
software in that case since you couldn't just throw ISOs everywhere.
Rob
all the best,
drew