The Day We Fight Back

Re:The Day We Fight Back by mcherm on Friday January 10, 2014 @08:22PM (#7040976)

I would expect that nearly any supporter of the GPL would also support a change to the law that eliminated copyright restrictions on the use of code.

The purpose of the GPL is not to prevent people from modifying and building on the code. The purpose... well, let me quote from http://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html :

  There are four freedoms that every user should have:

    the freedom to use the software for any purpose,

    the freedom to change the software to suit your needs,

    the freedom to share the software with your friends and neighbors, and

    the freedom to share the changes you make.

The GPL is a clever legal "hack" to achieve this, by allowing the code to be used only by others who agree to play by these rules. If the law were changed to enforce these rules directly, then no GPL would be needed. And eliminating intellectual property law restrictions on the use of code would get almost all the way there. (Companies would still be free to "protect" their code through secrecy: releasing only the compiled version and not the source code, but decompilers are pretty darn effective.)

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Re:The Day We Fight Back by gpvos on Saturday January 11, 2014 @10:46AM (#7042815)

I would expect that nearly any supporter of the GPL would also support a change to the law that eliminated copyright restrictions on the use of code.

Only if distributing software without its source was also made illegal.

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Re:The Day We Fight Back by nl on Saturday January 11, 2014 @06:16AM (#7042314)

I would expect that nearly any supporter of the GPL would also support a change to the law that eliminated copyright restrictions on the use of code.

WTF?!? No way! (although to be fair I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "use of code").

Companies would still be free to "protect" their code through secrecy: releasing only the compiled version and not the source code

This is exactly what the GPL is designed to avoid.

As you quoted above "the freedom to change the software to suit your needs" - that requires the source code!

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Re:The Day We Fight Back by betterunix on Saturday January 11, 2014 @12:24PM (#7043070)

"This is exactly what the GPL is designed to avoid."

...sort of. Source code access is important, sure, but here are a few more important issues that are basically orthogonal:

* The right to redistribute software

* The right to modify software (without source code?!?! Sure; imagine if I took Windows, removed the license protection code, and distributed that copy to you).

* The right to use software -- this, incredibly, can be a problem:

http://jalopnik.com/192843/robot-let-my-car-go-new-jersey-ga...

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