[bluGill]

While they are not tested, anything other than accepting the idea kills the idea of software completely. There is lots of room to change details, but somehow copyright and the fact that the code is copied into computer memory needs to be reconciled.

[xxpor]

I don't see how. It might kill specific ideological licensing of software code, but the idea it'd kill software as a whole is pretty unbelievable. Software is too valuable to society.

As we're seeing, there's VERY little software where the specific algorithms or ideas in the software are what's valuable. The value comes from the ability to sell a service based on the software and operate it at scale. Like you said, how much SaaS is mostly open source stuff packaged up? Android is (sort of) open source, companies pay lots of people a lot of money to contribute to the Linux kernel where they give away the code they developed with that money, etc etc.