Freedom or Copyright? - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)

[Matthias-Christian Ott]

Stefan Meretz <stefan.meretz at hbv.org> wrote:

> On 2008-02-09 10:03, Reinhard Mueller wrote:
> > Am Samstag, den 09.02.2008, 12:53 +1100 schrieb Ben Finney:
> > > In other words, if copyright truly did not exist, and everyone had
> > > the same freedoms (and more) in every work, not just those that
> > > have such freedoms explicitly granted by the GPL, then there would
> > > no longer need to be a GPL.
> >
> > I don't think so. Without copyright, everybody still had the chance
> > to hide the source and only publish the binaries. Everybody still had
> > the chance to write software that only works on specific hardware, to
> > write software that checks BIOS serial numbers, or whatever.
>
> Without copyright so called piracy would be legal and thus proprietary 
> software looses its commodity character, because it would no longer be 
> scarce. Then, all proprietary software would be out-cooperated by free 
> software, which bases on non-scarcity, e.g. abundance.
>
> But this scenario also develops with copyright, it only takes a longer 
> time to out-cooperate proprietary software.

Sorry for overlooking your post.

What do you mean by out-cooperate?

Regards
Matthias-Christian