The GPL is basically trying to make a world without copyright. The GPL basically only has teeth in a world where copyright exists. If copyright didn’t exist then everything would be in the public domain and the GPL would be toothless, but that’s fine because it would no longer be unnecessary.
Comment on Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk would like to ‘delete all IP law’ | TechCrunch
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 days agoThat’s what would happen if copyright doesn’t exist. If a company releases something, it’s immediately public domain, because no law protects it.
GPL
The GPL is very much not the public domain.
merc@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
No, the GPL very much requires copyright to work. The whole point is copyleft, which obligates changes to the code remain under the same license and be available to everyone.
Without copyright, companies just wouldn’t share their changes at all. The whole TIVO-ization clause in the GPL v3 would be irrelevant since TIVO can very much take without giving back. Copyright is very much essential to the whole concept of the GPL working.
Just think, why would anyone want to use Linux if Microsoft or Apple could just bake Linux into their offering?
merc@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
No, the GPL very much requires copyright to work
That’s what I said.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
If copyright didn’t exist then everything would be in the public domain and the GPL would be toothless, but that’s fine because it would no longer be unnecessary.
I’m saying it is necessary to achieve the aims of the GPL.
If it was just about ensuring the source is free, the MIT license would be sufficient. The GPL goes further and forces modifications to also be free, which relies on copyright.
bilb@lem.monster 5 days ago
Itsan interesting point that without any IP law, GPL would be invalid and corporations could use and modify things like Lemmy without complying with the license.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
Exactly. They wouldn’t be obligated to contribute back at all, so someone like Meta could just rebrand Lemmy into something else and throw ads everywhere.
seeigel@feddit.org 5 days ago
They already could. Lemmy’s users are not the ones who run the software. It’s like Google’s usage of Linux. They can keep their changes to themselves.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
They can only keep them to themselves if they don’t distribute the changes. Since Google distributes Android, they need to release their changes to Linux on Android under the GPL. Since they don’t distribute their server code, they don’t need to share their changes.
uis@lemm.ee 5 days ago
But then corporations could not stop anyone from modifying their modifications to things like Lemmy.
bilb@lem.monster 5 days ago
Well, they wouldn’t need to release those changes publicly.
uis@lemm.ee 5 days ago
But then anyone could take them anyway.