Comment by epihelix
12 days ago
> Copyright as a concept applied to code was always a god-awful idea, DMCA especially. And for JS served on the open web it's plainly comedic.
Why is it comedic? All of my own code is open source and freely available, but protected by copyright -- namely via the GPL. Copyright is what helps ensure that we retain open code, and ensures that it propagates openly.
How much further along the enshitification path do you think Android would be, if Google wasn't bound by the GPL in so many areas? Copyright with code is not only fair (why on earth would creating code be different to creating anything else?) but it is what keeps so many things free and open.
I think GPL was though of and is an answer to the idea of copyrighting code. If there was no copyright for code, there might not be any copyleft license. If we were all allowed to freely copy and modify and redistribute etc., then there would be no need for licenses enshrining these rights.
Hard question to answer. If there were another phone operating system, built on a combination of permissive and proprietary software, from a company which notoriously avoids 3.0GPL like the plague, and minimizes use of 2.0GPL whenever possible, then we'd have a fair basis of comparison.
Guess we'll never know.