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It's weird reading this thread on a site where I so often read "I don't believe in invisible property." Often applied to music, movies, or art.

I'm sure it's not as simple or hypocritical as the same people saying both things. And this specific story is about a very specific subversion of intellectual property rules to make it open. But it's a little weird hearing a complete lack of "information wants to be free" when the thing being "stolen" is our work.




I think the “information wants to be free” crowd would be happier if all work was free to be stolen. GPL enforcement is currently necessary to make that happen. It would be better if it wasn’t.


The original post is consistent with "information wants to be free" - we should be free to use and view Voice.ai source code, just as Voice.ai could use and view the code of these other projects they did. The only hypocrisy I see here is from Voice.ai, taking open source code themselves but then insisting (without any right to do so) that the result has become their proprietary "invisible property" and others can't do stuff with it.


GPL is a briliant trick.

It is a extreme reaction to extremely dire copyright situation.

If information cant be free in this system, then let’s add a restriction that it must be free.

Briliant!


People have to make best of it with the less than ideal copyright system. Some open-by-default system would be a better alternative for sure.


I'm not sure. If software copyright didn't exist, then source code would still be treated as trade secret. Code obfuscation would be used to make reverse engineering harder and source code wouldn't be provided, which is not a lot of change for proprietary software. In addition, copyleft and free software attributions would not exist without a framework of enforcment. A clear loss for free software.

Free software, apart from some very permissive licenses, requires copyright to exist.


Copyright isn't the only way to organise sofware, mandatory laws to open the code could exist as well.

You are right that regulations need to exist for free software to exist but copyright isn't necessary one of them.


The same people are saying both things. The day we end copyright I'd be happy to end the GPL.


Copyleft ensures the continuation of a freedom already given, copyright restricts freedom.

(Yes I know de jure copyleft relies on copyright to exist, but morally they are diametrically opposite)


Isn't the whole purpose of this to have the information, that is, the Voice.ai source, be free?




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