>How are software developers supposed to put a roof over their head and food on the table if software can't be privatized?
If an plumber or electrician smartly comes up with a certain configuration or the like how is it that he still makes money when someone else can come in to learn from it? When someone completely unrelated can come in to fix it when it breaks? When someone completely unrelated can copy it even?
I'd say overly restrictive copyright has not protected innovation but hampered it. It potentially says do not build, iterate, improve on such things for way too long in way too many ways.
As a software developer I have benefited plenty from this. I've also probably lost out a lot due to it in the countless little interactions and price calculations that make up our life.
From paying a bit more for an engineered intel/amd duopoly and licensing for some standards extended into perpetuity here and there when making a new pc to paying that extra nth of a cent for a carefully engineered bank transaction system meant to protect Worldline or the like despite carefully limited regulatory efforts to the contrary.
I think you're conflating a number of different things that are distinct:
1) Copyright
2) Reverse engineering
3) Patents
4) DRM
5) EULA
Reverse engineering is legal. Copyright doesn't prohibit reverse engineering. But reverse engineering is also usually very difficult. There's no law that says you have to make it easy for someone to reverse engineer your product, nor should there be IMO.
The current patent system is crazy. Too many simple, overly broad patents granted by a patent office that doesn't even truly understand what they're looking at. I would definitely reform or abolish that system.
IMO the main problem today with anti-consumer products is not copyright but rather DRM. When the seller locks down the product and prevents the consumer from using the product as they please after they pay for the product and bring it home. DRM has a legitimate use to protect theft, but DRM has gone too far: it's not used just to prevent theft but also to control. The solution to this problem is not "free software" but rather protecting consumer legal rights.
If an plumber or electrician smartly comes up with a certain configuration or the like how is it that he still makes money when someone else can come in to learn from it? When someone completely unrelated can come in to fix it when it breaks? When someone completely unrelated can copy it even?
I'd say overly restrictive copyright has not protected innovation but hampered it. It potentially says do not build, iterate, improve on such things for way too long in way too many ways.
As a software developer I have benefited plenty from this. I've also probably lost out a lot due to it in the countless little interactions and price calculations that make up our life. From paying a bit more for an engineered intel/amd duopoly and licensing for some standards extended into perpetuity here and there when making a new pc to paying that extra nth of a cent for a carefully engineered bank transaction system meant to protect Worldline or the like despite carefully limited regulatory efforts to the contrary.