Comment on To buy no longer means anything :(
admin@lemmy.my-box.dev 8 months agoI’m sure there are exceptions if you’ll look hard enough. However, even in the case of most open source software, you’ll never become the owner of the intellectual property, you’re just free to use, modify and share it.
tabular@lemmy.world 8 months ago
We don’t own the patients to our hardware but we still say we own an item becauee we are in control of it. Users don’t need the copyright of software they use to control it - to modify and share software is to own it.
(The only thing they may lack is the option to relicense the software if it’s copyleft, but I’d argue that ensures software freedom for 3rd parties).
admin@lemmy.my-box.dev 8 months ago
Yeah, that’s where misconceptions like the one in this thread stem from. Repeat a lie enough, and you’ll start believing it.
tabular@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Two people can speak the same language in name and yet the same word can mean something different to them. Words do not have innate definitions, they have usages.
In my possession are many things which I presume have copyright/patent and fewer things which do not. It seems to me we just draw the line of “ownership” around different things.