If there’s no copyright, there’s no closed source. You get their code, decompile/disassemble and reuse as you see fit.
You might argue that doesn't help much if they never distribute that code (only runs on their servers). Here’s the inconvenient truth: GPL already allows that. Anyone can take a GPL codebase, do any modifications they want, run it forever, and never contribute back. You’d need AGPL to forbid that. GPL is only concerned if you further distribute the modifications.
And how does that exactly stop Amazon, Google or Microsoft (heh) from running GPLd software in their data centers and raking in money for hosting products built by poor open source devs?
I'm not worried about Microsoft recompiling bash and redistributing it. Is that a realistic problem for you?
Awesome. If you think that is stopping anyone, here's a challenge for you:
GNU Bash is GPL. You can run Bash (and many other Linux commands) in Windows through Windows Subsystem for Linux. In fact, WSL is a nice example of Microsoft doing embrace & extend.
The challenge: find the Microsoft's published code for Bash.
WSL does not include bash. When you use bash from within WSL, it is using the version of bash that was included in the upstream distribution of linux you have installed. If you are using a Debian based image, to get the source code run the following:
My point exactly (notice I didn't say MS distributes bash - it doesn't, as you pointed out).
Bash being GPL doesn't stop MS from benefiting from it by providing it to WSL users which make WSL more valuable for them. It also (as we talked in the other comment) doesn't prevent Amazon from running a database and charging people for it.
So what's this great advantage of GPL that it would make it worthwhile to keep the entire copyright system just so we could still have GPL?
If you dig around in its origin, GPL was concieved as a tool to "fight system from within system". If there's no system, you don't have to fight the system.
Then why did you ask for something if you knew it didn't exist???
Overall I think you are mistaken about the purpose of the GPL. It does not, nor has it ever intended to prohibit commercial activities. RMS and FSF have been pretty clear about this for many decades. And in fact, they are against the idea of licenses that prohibit commercial use.
The reason that large successful projects like Linux are so capable is not because it has a price tag of zero (and it often does not), but because of the feedback loop created by the viral-nature of the software license.
The vast majority of Linux is not a volunteer project -- but software developed by commercial software engineers who are being paid by a company to write software. Before copyleft, the idea that they would voluntarily share source code was laughable. The only reason they do is because they are legally required to do so.
This viral nature of copyleft creates a positive feedback loop:
1. Company uses software because it is free and solves a problem
2. they need a modification so they make it
3. they contribute back to the project because it is required by the copyright license
4. the project becomes more valuable at solving more problems that other companies have
5. Go to step 1
Breaking this feedback loop would put companies back to their natural state of not sharing. The result is that the software landscape would start to look a lot like the 80s and 90s again.
Without copyright, copyleft would not exist. And without copyleft, Linux would have been a hobby OS that died out in the early 90s. We'd be using things like Windows Server, Unix, etc. And to protect their business in the absence of copyright, they'd have heavy DRM schemes, obfuscation, cryptographic licensing, etc.
This entire comment is completely backwards. Linux gained momentum first, then it was adopted by the wider industry.
It's much easier to upstream your desired changes than maintain a separate fork (closed or otherwise) long-term. Additionally, many of the contributors have been using it for own servers, not required to contribute back.
Things like NVidia and other closed drivers show you can bolt a non-open part to the GPL code if you try enough.
> And without copyleft, Linux would have been a hobby OS that died out in the early 90s. We'd be using things like Windows Server, Unix, etc.
This ignores the entire existence of FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD.
> they'd have heavy DRM schemes, obfuscation, cryptographic licensing
This ignores the existence of heavy DRM schemes, obfuscation, kernel-level anticheat spyware, criminalisation of copyright-circumvention schemes, etc.
At this point, I think you're just trolling, so I'll stop here.
> It's much easier to upstream your desired changes than maintain a separate fork (closed or otherwise) long-term. Additionally, many of the contributors have been using it for own servers, not required to contribute back.
Then why is ~75% of the kernel from corporate commits today? You think large tech companies just started to become coincidentally generous with the advent of Linux?
> This ignores the entire existence of FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD.
The BSD are quite niche in install base and highly rely on GPL'd ports from Linux.
And, by far the most popular OS in the BSD family tree is MacOS, which is primarily closed source.
> This ignores the existence of heavy DRM schemes, obfuscation, kernel-level anticheat spyware, criminalisation of copyright-circumvention schemes, etc.
I'm not ignoring it, I'm telling you that would be more common, if you remove the all of the other mechanisms by which a company could choose. Without any legal controls whatsoever, the only option to control the use of a company's software would be through technical means. Removing other options would be incentivizing this.
