Stefan's headers [was:Names and identifiers]

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Richard Damon <Richard at Damon-Family.org>:
> Copyright law is not what makes something 'closed source' in the eyes
> of the Open Source community. For example, Microsoft doesn't use
> Copyright to keep the source code for Windows secret, they just don't
> provide it.

It would leak out with developers who move to new jobs. And that would
be good.

> The thing that gives the Open Source licenses the power to force
> people to share the source code is that their IS a copyright on the
> source code and the usage license on it demands revealing
> modifications to others.

Most open-source licenses don't have that stipulation:

   <URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-sour
   ce_software_licenses>

In particular, CPython's license doesn't seem to require it:

   <URL: https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/master/LICENSE>

> If software providers could no longer depend on Copyright law, then
> you would see much more use of the hobbling copy protection
> technologies, and automatically enforced licensing methods. That, and
> a lot less software produced.

The consequences would be hard to estimate precisely. You don't need so
many reimplementations of ideas if good ideas could be copied freely. I
believe the society would gain faster progress of software solutions
with the copyright restrictions gone.


Marko