Without copyright there would be no need for copyleft. Its right there in the name.
It sounds plausible but it’s wrong. Without copyright, you are allowed to copy, use, and distribute all digital works regardless but being legally allowed doesn’t mean (a) that you are able to (e.g. copying might be ~impossible due to DRM and other security measures) and (b) that you are entitled to the source code of such work so someone can take your FOSS code, put it in their proprietary software, and then distribute only the binaries.
Copyleft licenses, through copyright, enforce sharing.
The whole point for many, me included, is for everyone to be able to use any works in any way we want. Including putting “open source” code into “proprietary” binaries. Because there are no proprietary binaries without IP protections - everyone can just decompile the code and reuse it.
I don’t think it’s accurate to say that everyone can just decompile the code and reuse it. Decompiling and reverse engineering a binary is incredibly hard. Even if you do that there are some aspects of the original code which get optimised out in the compiler and can’t be reproduced from just the binary.
boramalper@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It sounds plausible but it’s wrong. Without copyright, you are allowed to copy, use, and distribute all digital works regardless but being legally allowed doesn’t mean (a) that you are able to (e.g. copying might be ~impossible due to DRM and other security measures) and (b) that you are entitled to the source code of such work so someone can take your FOSS code, put it in their proprietary software, and then distribute only the binaries.
Copyleft licenses, through copyright, enforce sharing.
Aux@feddit.uk 1 month ago
The whole point for many, me included, is for everyone to be able to use any works in any way we want. Including putting “open source” code into “proprietary” binaries. Because there are no proprietary binaries without IP protections - everyone can just decompile the code and reuse it.
CosmicGiraffe@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I don’t think it’s accurate to say that everyone can just decompile the code and reuse it. Decompiling and reverse engineering a binary is incredibly hard. Even if you do that there are some aspects of the original code which get optimised out in the compiler and can’t be reproduced from just the binary.
Aux@feddit.uk 1 month ago
As someone who has extensive experience with decompiling, I can say that working with binaries is usually a lot easier than with a source code.