This attempt to morally equivocate an international corporation denying people access to popular culture, and volunteer developers giving away source code for free on the condition that anybody who wants to sell it also distribute the source code, is absurd. Bordering on offensive.

They created the “popular culture” authors of GPL software didn’t whine about Microsoft not open sourcing Windows, they created their own software.

Authors of GPL software have the right to distribute their software as they please...just as Disney does.

Disney's legal right is not in dispute. A morally equivalence is the matter disputed. You can only hope to equivocate the two by abstracting away "minor" matters like the vastly different power dynamics involved, or the nature of terms of the licenses in question.

>authors of GPL software didn’t whine about Microsoft not open sourcing Windows

We both know that's not true, but it's also not relevant.

The entire software market was about proprietary servers running proprietary servers backed by corporations. Open source software took over the server market.

Blumhouse and Tyler Perry Studios are evidence that you can be successful without budgets of $100 million budgets.

None of that comes anywhere close to justifying your equivalence of Disney and free software developers. Rather you seem to be trying to walk that back by instead talking about other things.

The simple fact of the matter is the nature of the licenses in question are very different, and the nature of the licensers in question are very different. They share little other than a relation to copyright. The social impact of their use of copyright, which is the matter of contention, is worlds apart.

No, I think that any time posters on HN want the government to intervene and dictate what others can do with their content would be horrified if the same policies applied to their sacred cows. Whether it be GPL or the right for companies like ElasticCo and Mongo to forbid cloud providers from offering their software as a service.

What’s the difference between Disney not allowing their content on Netflix or in theaters so they can exclusively use it on Disney+ and ElasticCo not allowing third party cloud providers to allow their software to be sold as a service so that they can exclusively offer managed services?

Do you want the government to step in and tell you how you can distribute your work?