| I fully agree. Limiting the amount of copies of software to sell them like a finite good has so many downsides: 1. There may be people who cannot use/afford some software, although there is technically an infinite supply. 2. Collaboration becomes awkward. Either all contributors give up their rights (Open Source), or one contributor holds all the rights and the rest is being treated unfairly. The latter decreases the incentives to make software modular and reusable. 3. The resulting software typically gets worse due to some copyright enforcement mechanisms. For example, no closed source software will ever have a good debugger, because that would allow viewing and changing the source code. 4. It creates a power imbalance between software owners and software users. Nearly all software has to be adapted over time, but the software owner has a monopoly on performing such adaptations. The result is enshittification, surveillance, and basically a return to feudalism where daily life is governed by a small number of overlords. 5. It is not clear how to price software fairly, and there is also little incentive to do so. 6. My impression is that high-quality software converges to formal proof, which is AFAIK not copyrightable. For all these reasons, I think it is time to consider a world without copyright on software. To those that worry about salaries in such a world: Negotiate payment in advance (contracts, crowdfunding, bounties, ...), or get a job where software is created as a byproduct (consultant, researcher, tester, ...). |