@maija@waifu@eric Ah yes, another one that loves to comment on the "GPL", who has never read the GPLv1, GPLv2 or GPLv3.
It's time to read; https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html "9. Acceptance Not Required for Having Copies. You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program. Ancillary propagation of a covered work occurring solely as a consequence of using peer-to-peer transmission to receive a copy likewise does not require acceptance. "
@maija@waifu@eric All GPL versions give the user the freedom to run, modify and/or redistribute the software, even commercially.
What is not allowed is taking those 4 freedoms away by restricting the software (that's right, restricting is forbidden).
Weak licenses like public-domain equivalents are less free, as they do not ensure that *all* of the users have freedom - if the software is any good, what always happens is that it becomes proprietary software for *most* of the users, which is a massive loss of freedom.
GPLv3; `6. Conveying Non-Source Forms. You may convey a covered work in object code form under the terms of sections 4 and 5, provided that you also convey the machine-readable Corresponding Source under the terms of this License, in one of these ways:
a. Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product (including a physical distribution medium), accompanied by the Corresponding Source fixed on a durable physical medium customarily used for software interchange.
b. Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product (including a physical distribution medium), accompanied by a written offer, valid for at least three years and valid for as long as you offer spare parts or customer support for that product model, to give anyone who possesses the object code either (1) a copy of the Corresponding Source for all the software in the product that is covered by this License, on a durable physical medium customarily used for software interchange, for a price no more than your reasonable cost of physically performing this conveying of source, or (2) access to copy the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge.
c. Convey individual copies of the object code with a copy of the written offer to provide the Corresponding Source. This alternative is allowed only occasionally and noncommercially, and only if you received the object code with such an offer, in accord with subsection 6b.
d. Convey the object code by offering access from a designated place (gratis or for a charge), and offer equivalent access to the Corresponding Source in the same way through the same place at no further charge. You need not require recipients to copy the Corresponding Source along with the object code. If the place to copy the object code is a network server, the Corresponding Source may be on a different server (operated by you or a third party) that supports equivalent copying facilities, provided you maintain clear directions next to the object code saying where to find the Corresponding Source. Regardless of what server hosts the Corresponding Source, you remain obligated to ensure that it is available for as long as needed to satisfy these requirements.
e. Convey the object code using peer-to-peer transmission, provided you inform other peers where the object code and Corresponding Source of the work are being offered to the general public at no charge under subsection 6d.`
It is trivial to include the source code, or include a written offer, thus if that is not done, the intention is to distribute proprietary software that violates freedoms 1 & 3.
@waifu@eric@maija Unless you steal a storage medium containing software with the help of a boat, you have not pirated software.
Yes, bypassing digital handcuffs and sharing object code would be legal.
There are plenty of malicious hates to deny the user freedom and therefore software would still be made proprietary via withholding the source code by monsters.
@waifu@eric@maija That was this world - for a long time, software did not fall under copyright, until some court decided that software fell under copyright.
Many businesses made software proprietary via NDAs out of pure malice and contempt that the user would have freedom, when copyright did not apply to software.
Such disincentives would still exist if software was to fall out of copyright.
@Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com@eric@pl.starnix.network@maija@netzsphaere.xyz The problem that you have is that in that world anyone can just make a better copy with exactly the same code and just sell it for a cheaper price (or free), you cannot do that now, look at nintendo and adobe placing patents on everything, from what I understand there are things that cannot be legally implemented in gimp because of copyright is that correct or is it just bad by design?
Consider Netflix: even if you technically can share & adapt movies or binaries without any problems, there is still a profit incentive to make them very hard to acquire, hidden behind an effective DRM. I'd say security through obscurity, even if minor, is large enough of an incentive to not make your DRM source code freely available.
To be fair, in our world, once it's out, it's out for good as well, just grab the WEB-DL torrent.
In that world there is still the first mover incentive, if it takes users a week to get the file, you've won. And there would also be a sort of "second mover incentive" to not publish instructions/tools for cracking the DRM since you can legally put up a cheaper competing DRM-ed streaming service by "stealing" content from the first one.
Well, I suppose every "source available" software in our world would automatically become free software in that world (I'm assuming any other pseudo-copyright bullshit will not be a thing in that world as well, patents, weird trademark clauses, special legislation for DRMs, etc). And I think the incentive would be as large as the incentive to make "source available" software in our world, so yes, but I think for your question this answer would actually be "no". If I am a developer who only releases binaries to, idk, make sure you pay me to give you updates, I would keep doing that doubly so in a no-copyright world, except I'd also probably invest into tools that make reverse engineering harder.
@eris@p.enes.lv@eric@pl.starnix.network@Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com@maija@netzsphaere.xyz ok then the question goes around too, because why would i as a client, would buy your software if i can probably find the same thing for free in a while? like, what is the value I'm getting from our transaction? Make no mistake I'm not trying to attack your argument, we probably agree on the freedom part, all I want is for everyone to have more freedom, and that means having more incentives to create and use free software, because you can't never have too many for those
@shitpisscum@waifu@zero I don't care how much money you make, if you use Adobe >XD >XDDDDDD >XDDDDDDDDDD like some infantile teenage millennial, you're a fucking loser, and you deserve to have Suiseiseki hunt you down to the ends of the Earth. End of.
@eris@p.enes.lv@eric@pl.starnix.network@Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com@maija@netzsphaere.xyz The free alternatives are not able to appear also because of the copyright law, Nintendo bullies anyone that tries to make things with their IPs with copyright, perhaps having no copyright protection would mean getting more free software? What I'm feeling is that we agree on having more free software is good 🤝
ok then the question goes around too, because why would i as a client, would buy your software if i can probably find the same thing for free in a while? like, what is the value I'm getting from our transaction? Same as our world. Maybe there just isn't any good free alternatives, maybe you've gotten vendor-locked due to being taught only how to use my photo editing tool. And if you mean "why can't I just legally torrent the file", you can but you won't get support and timely enough updates due to it being non-free. I guess this kinda sounds like RedHat's business model lmfao, so you can definitely do that with normal free software, just easier with proprietary as you keep the source locked away in a safe.
Perhaps what we have to look at not incentives to write free software but disincentives to write proprietary software? Lack of copyright protections would make proprietary source harder to protect -- you'd have to employ top of the line obfuscation methods and if your source code gets leaked, lol lmao. That extra effort and cost might be enough to disincentivise an "I'll write a proprietary markdown wiki in electron and sell that with a subscription" startup.