On Sun, 10 Jun 2018 13:36:34 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote: >> That's all speculation. It's impossible to say how things would have >> turned out if copyrights didn't apply to software. Certainly different, >> but not necessarily worse. >> >> In the early days, computer manufacturers didn't worry about people >> copying their software, because it was no use without the hardware, and >> selling hardware was how they made their money. There's no reason that >> business model couldn't have continued into the PC era. >> >> > It would have meant that third-party software would not exist.
Says the fellow using a free mail server (funded by advertising) on a free OS (funded by donations) on a free mailing list about a free programming language :-) Lack of copyright for software would not affect software-as-a-service like Gmail. It would not affect FOSS licences like the MIT and BSD licence, although it might declaw the GPL. It would not affect shareware and postcardware and freeware software to any appreciable amount. It would not affect the primary driver for FOSS, namely people scratching their own itch and being willing to share that solution with others. So long as people had access to interpreters and compilers and the ability to write and distribute their own code, the lack of copyright for software would only have mattered for certain economic models for software, namely the paid, closed-source, non-free commercial software market. That's an important market, but it is not all of it. The scenario you describe would require computers to be locked down behind paywalls with trusted computing hardware (a misnomer, because its about *not trusting the user* rather than trusting the computer) etc., or a wholesale move to SAS with no access to any sort of development environment beyond Excel spreadsheets. While we are creeping ever closer to the day that the general purpose computer is extinct or only available to an elite few, while the rest of us are stuck in walled gardens using only approved software, the technology for that didn't exist in the early days of the home computer revolution. -- Steven D'Aprano "Ever since I learned about confirmation bias, I've been seeing it everywhere." -- Jon Ronson -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list