If you believe in open source, then you need to be respectful of copyright law. It is the foundation for open source licensing.
I don't see how that follows. I support open source, that is, the free distribution of software code. Open source licensing is just a necessary evil to account for the fact that copyright is anti-open-source by default. A few decades back, when the US and other countries required registration to copyright works, open source licensing would have been a ridiculous suggestion (except for copyleft licenses), even though open source itself would still make perfect sense.
It depends on your meaning behind "free distribution", but arguably most open source licenses don't exist to provide that specifically -- they exist to permit it while abiding by the other conditions on the license.
For example, if you don't respect copyright law, you wouldn't be able to argue that a corporation taking GPLed code and incorporating it into a proprietary product is immoral nor taking BSD licensed code and removing a link back to the original author is immoral.
For example, if you don't respect copyright law, you wouldn't be able to argue that a corporation taking GPLed code and incorporating it into a proprietary product is immoral nor taking BSD licensed code and removing a link back to the original author is immoral.
No, I just can't argue that on the grounds that people should have a right to prevent others from copying their work. I can still defend it without incoherence on other grounds. Just because in some jurisdictions you have to use copyright to defend those rights, that doesn't make those rights dependent on accepting copyright.
For example, here in civil law countries, there's commonly no "copyright" as such; there's Moral Rights (which protect stuff like attribution) and Economic Rights. Therefore, there's no implication that abolishing Economic Rights like restricting others from copying must also abolish attribution rights.
Essentially, the attribution right is the goal, and copyright is just a method that can be used to achieve that goal. There's no incoherence in defending the goal without supporting this method of achieving it.
And that applies to the GPL as well - I can defend the right to prevent others from using your code in closed binaries, without having to defend the wider right of prevent any copying at all. (Though in my particular case, I wouldn't mind losing copyleft if copyright was to be abolished)
For example, here in civil law countries, there's commonly no "copyright" as such; there's Moral Rights (which protect stuff like attribution) and Economic Rights. Therefore, there's no implication that abolishing Economic Rights like restricting others from copying must also abolish attribution rights
You're correct that moral and property rights are distinct in many civil law countries, but both are under the umbrella of copyright and, as far as I know, there are no countries that enforce moral rights but not property rights. I'm aware that there are countries that do the reverse: acknowledge property rights but not moral rights. Which countries' legal systems do you have in mind?
And that applies to the GPL as well - I can defend the right to prevent others from using your code in closed binaries, without having to defend the wider right of prevent any copying at all. (Though in my particular case, I wouldn't mind losing copyleft if copyright was to be abolished)
According to the idea that we should not respect property rights (and, like you say, only respect attribution / moral rights), this would allow the company to re-license GPL code under an MIT license, then use the newly MIT-licensed code in ways that were unintended according to the original author (i.e. inclusion in non-GPLed code). Like you mention, this could be in the form of closed-source binaries, which of course could be reverse engineered legally, because of no property rights, but, really, this system seems terrible to me.
While I love open source software and acknowledge that copyright can be abused, I can't see the benefit of a system that permits you to take the work of someone else, ignoring their conditions, then modify and re-distribute it as if it were under something similar to an MIT license -- respecting only attribution.