[saurik]

The "parties" of a treaty are governments. This has nothing to do with GPL. This is saying that a government can't say "you aren't allowed to sell software in the country of Frain as a non-Frainian unless you provide the source code for that product (whether to the end user or to the government)". They leave an exception for "critical infrastructure", because it was hard to argue that the government of Frain shouldn't be able to require that nuclear control software come with source code. Essentially, I don't see why this clause is concerning. It is clearly a form of pandering to the interests of software developers reliant on intellectual property rights, but only in a way that seems to me mostly about forcing capitalism on nation states that might disagree with its premise.

[chronial]

I can't see how this about capitalism. Showing source code to anybody (government or end user) does not make you loose your rights to that source code or the compiled application.

This is about freedom and the right to self-determination of governments/citizens (and thus also about democracy).

I would like to point out that our patent system is basically something like this: We as a society will protect your intellectual property rights for your machine only if you show us your blueprints.

[jessriedel]

> I would like to point out that our patent system is basically something like this: We as a society will protect your intellectual property rights for your machine only if you show us your blueprints.

Sure but, right or wrong, the general consensus of developed countries is that software is protected even if it is closed source. (That is, they have decided that patent protection requires disclosure but copyright protection does not.) A few other countries may disagree, but the whole point of TPP is to harmonize disagreements because (it is claimed) the frictions they introduce are worse than the micro-optimizations that individual states make.

Incidentally, in practice these sorts of disclosure agreements are used by states like China for protectionist reasons, not as part of some open-source ideal.

[dataker]

>Showing source code to anybody (government or end user) does not make you loose your rights to that source code or the compiled application.

You lose control over your own property. That's enough. Similar to police officers entering your home without a warrant.

[Rusky]

One big difference is that you're distributing the binaries (or devices containing them) anyway, which makes them reverse-engineerable.

[simonh]

> ...mostly about forcing capitalism on nation states..

And these non-capitalist countries are?

All countries are capitalist. They may claim otherwise, but if the party that paid for the means of production makes a claim on the value of the produced goods, then they are capitalist. It doesn't matter if the party that provided the capital was a private citizens or a government. If the workers that produced the goods don't have sole claim on the value of what they produced, the system is capitalist. The only difference in the USSR, Maoist China or even North Korea is that the state tried to monopolize capital.

[venomsnake]

Well, you will be surprised how much can be classified as critical.

I will just put one copy of windows in a powerplant. Somewhere.

[lloydsparkes]

Although any nation state that does not like capitalism, surely would not be signing a trade agreement to open up trading markets.