[pp.int.general] Why Free Software misses the point

[Edison Carter]

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 7:23 AM, Yves Quemener <quemener.yves at free.fr> wrote:
> Mikko Särelä wrote:
>> I agree.
>>
>> As a side note, I believe copyright should only be available for
>> software that has been published with source code. If the purpose of
>> copyrights is, as with patents, to give incentives to produce things -
>> to enrich public domain, then no legal protection should be given to
>> closed source software.
>>
> An interesting and intriguing idea. But I am not sure about what you
> propose. I see two interpretations :
>
> - That copyright should not apply to binaries but that one could publish
> source code, copyright it, and restrict the rights to copy and
> distribute it without paying him (the only difference with today's
> situation would be that we can see the source code but not reuse it)
>
> - That non-free licenses should not be enforceable.
>
> Which is it ?
>

Both.

This is an idea that I also though of; the idea of copyright as a
trade off (we'll give up our right to copy stuff temporarily, in
return for you contributing more stuff which we get free use of later)
is not completely unreasonable and I think most pirates accept the
basic premise.

BUT we (the public) need to get something in return. If software is
released in a binary-only form so that it's very difficult for anyone
to build on it later, or if art/literature is released under
restrictive DRM that makes it difficult to exercise  our fair use
rights then you're not really contributing to the general good of
humanity (science / culture  / the public domain) At the very least
you should get no special protection in law against reverse
engineering of your software or circumvention of your DRM scheme but I
would argue that you should get 'no copyright at all' You haven't met
your end of the bargain so why should we (the public) have to uphold
ours?