[TheDong]

Free software / open source licenses have effectively made copyright disappear for open source code.

Red Hat certainly does package up a large collection of open source work and sell support for it, but that has not caused authors of open source software to despair and quit writing code. It is not common for a commercial entity to republish open source software, and Red Hat is an exception.

Sure, there are a vast number of open source developers who do it on the side, or are not compensated... but that is also true of professions where copyright remains. Most authors, most artists, they write or draw on the side, post their work to substack or twitter or deviant art or such, and never see a dime.

I think open source software is a good example of what happens when you get rid of copyright - people still feel ownership for what they make, people are still creative, and a tiny fraction of people manage to make a profit off their passion projects.

[ssalazar]

Copyleft / GPL licenses require copyright law to have any threat of enforcement. Otherwise anyone could just ignore the terms of a copyleft license and use open source under any terms they wish.

[caconym_]

> Free software / open source licenses have effectively made copyright disappear for open source code.

[...]

> I think open source software is a good example of what happens when you get rid of copyright - people still feel ownership for what they make [...]

I think this is a quite a stretch given the prominence of copyright in popular open source licenses, including (for example) the extremely popular and permissive MIT license. You can copy it, modify it, distribute it, etc., but I still own the copyright, and you still have to give me credit for the initial development. I can choose whatever license I want, which may or may not impose restrictions on who can use my code in derivative works, etc., and how.

In a very real sense, I do own the FOSS software I've released to the world. If legal codification of that ownership isn't important to open source developers, why are so many pixels spent discussing it?

[TheDong]

Public domain / UNLICENSE style licenses are less popular, but still have the same qualities I mentioned of people feeling ownership, even though there is zero copyright in that specific case and their is no legal codification of ownership.

I understand that MIT etc are copyright licenses, but they remove the majority of copyright's requirements. They only require attribution, and are a statement that the other parts of copyright, the restrictions on distribution and modification, explicitly do not apply.

They remove the part of copyright that people typically think of when someone says copyright.

[caconym_]

Sure, some developers are cool with public domain; the same is true with writers and other creatives working in pretty much any medium you can name.

The fact remains, copyright is very much relevant to the open source community today. It's absurd to say otherwise, given the amount of discussion the topic generates. On that basis I categorically reject your statement that "free software / open source licenses have effectively made copyright disappear for open source code."

> They remove the part of copyright that people typically think of when someone says copyright.

"People" don't know the first thing about copyright, because (besides the obvious lack of technical knowledge) it's invisible to them when it's working in their favor and highly visible when it isn't.

What does copyright mean to creators, to whom it is granted? Does it mean ownership, in some vague, ill-defined sense? Guaranteed attribution wherever their work ends up? The right to ensure their work is used only for applications they consider ethical? A guarantee that nobody will be able to make money off it? A guarantee that nobody will be able to make money off it but them? A guarantee that movie studio X won't hire a hack writer-director for a cash-in sequel that ruins the original's reputation? The answer is that it means all these things, and more, to different creators.

As a creator of copyrighted works (of both FOSS and fiction, as it happens), copyright means something in particular to me. It means something else to other creators. I wouldn't speak for them, and I'm kind of astonished by how many people with (apparently) little or no skin in the game are willing to do so.

[thayne]

So it would be like a copyright system where you have to give credit to the creator, but don't have to pay royalties.

[vel0city]

Free software/ open source licenses are copyright.

[throwaway75026]

MIT/BSD licenses are essentially a copyright waiver.

[rdpintqogeogsaa]

They are not. You still have strings attached: the requirement of attribution and the disclaimer. With 3-clause and 4-clause BSD, there are even more strings attached.

You can't just take MIT-licensed code. You have to take the code and the full copyright notice and license grant with disclaimer.

[throwaway75026]

Copyright law doesn't allow you to waive those rights without falling into Public Domain, which is considered grey area in some countries.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

> Free software / open source licenses have effectively made copyright disappear for open source code.

And some of those licenses are being rethought by companies as they realize that that Amazon/Google/Microsoft can just take their work, put it on AWS as SAAS and capture most if not all of that value.

[pabs3]

I watched a talk somewhere that argued that Amazon/Google/Microsoft selling SaaS access to software massively increases the size of the market for that software and in the process actually increases the revenue of existing businesses in that market, while still decreasing their market share. With a savvy team and a good relationship with the big SaaS vendors, you could definitely ride that wave to increased success.