Comment by iwontberude

5 months ago

What you argue is a non-sequitur and regardless of case law really makes no sense when the spirit of the action is to replicate something. Reasonable people would say that replicating and disseminating code with the express purpose of avoiding copyright is a violation of copyright and why it exists in the first place.

Just because something is trivial enough to copy does not mean it was trivial to conceive of and codify. Mens rea really does matter when we are talking about defrauding intellectual property holders and stealing their opportunity.

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iwontberude

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bananamogul  5 months ago

"Reasonable people would say that replicating and disseminating code with the express purpose of avoiding copyright is a violation of copyright and why it exists in the first place."

But then how can the FSF reimplement AT&T utilities? The FSF didn't invent grep. They wrote a new version of it from scratch under a different license.

  • iwontberude  5 months ago

    Yes the entire enterprise and legal precedent is full of shit with intellectual property law being abused left and right. For example, I don’t think Google should have been able to copy the Java API for Kotlin/Android. Java should have just died and everyone would have been better off. By making copyright more weak, free software reaps what it sews.

    I love FOSS but I hate that it’s been used to replicate existing code or serve as a way to outsource corporate tech debt. The shadow of profit looms over it all.