• southerntofu@lemmy.ml
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    3 years ago

    it’s basically enforced by government and closes off commercial use sometimes

    I’m not aware of a single instance of government enforcement of copyleft (although there’s been threats of legal actions), and copyleft certainly does not prevent commercial use at all.

    forces people to go along with whatever the rules are with the license

    The only rule of the license is “don’t change the license”, i.e. let everyone enjoy the same rights you did. If you find that authoritarian, i don’t know what to say.

    it probably requires just getting rid of intellectual property / IP altogether though to have actual / complete software freedom

    I agree in principle (if we abolish all other property with it :)) but as an isolated measure it would not be efficient. Hardware manufacturers would still write crappy Windows drivers instead of releasing their hardware data sheets unless they’re compelled by law, and what good does it do us to share compiled binaries if we can’t access the source code? In fact, the situation may even be worse because without the threat of copyleft enforcement shady corporations may in fact just keep violating copyleft.

    It all depends on the specifics, but removing intellectual property without abolishing capitalism is in my view insignificant.