[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.