Chris Angelico wrote:
Open source would not exist without copyright,because it is copyright law that gives license terms their meaning.
That statement doesn't make any sense. If there were no copyright laws, there would be no need for licences to distribute software. You seem to be saying that nobody would ever release the source of their software unless they could impose some kind of restrictions on what people could do with it. But I don't think that's true at all. Open sharing of software was the *default* before people got the idea of applying copyright laws to it. If there were no copyright laws, people who wanted to share their source would still do so, and people who wanted to keep it a trade secret would still do so. The only difference is there would be less lawyers making money out of it.
Even if your license terms amount to "do what you like with this but be sure to credit me as the author", that's only enforceable because of copyright law.
If attribution is all that really matters, it could be addressed by quite a different kind of law. Or tackle it socially rather than legally. Get it out there first with your name all over it, so that anyone who tries to "steal" it later will receive the appropriate level of public shaming. -- Greg -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
