I'm trying to understand the actual harm you think would come to free software if in fact there were no copyright, hence no GPL.

The reason that large successful projects like Linux are so capable is not because it has a price tag of zero (and it often does not), but because of the feedback loop created by the viral-nature of the software license.

The vast majority of Linux is not a volunteer project -- but software developed by commercial software engineers who are being paid by a company to write software. Before copyleft, the idea that they would voluntarily share source code was laughable. The only reason they do is because they are legally required to do so.

This viral nature of copyleft creates a positive feedback loop:

1. Company uses software because it is free and solves a problem

2. they need a modification so they make it

3. they contribute back to the project because it is required by the copyright license

4. the project becomes more valuable at solving more problems that other companies have

5. Go to step 1

Breaking this feedback loop would put companies back to their natural state of not sharing. The result is that the software landscape would start to look a lot like the 80s and 90s again.

Without copyright, copyleft would not exist. And without copyleft, Linux would have been a hobby OS that died out in the early 90s. We'd be using things like Windows Server, Unix, etc. And to protect their business in the absence of copyright, they'd have heavy DRM schemes, obfuscation, cryptographic licensing, etc.

This entire comment is completely backwards. Linux gained momentum first, then it was adopted by the wider industry.

It's much easier to upstream your desired changes than maintain a separate fork (closed or otherwise) long-term. Additionally, many of the contributors have been using it for own servers, not required to contribute back.

Things like NVidia and other closed drivers show you can bolt a non-open part to the GPL code if you try enough.

> And without copyleft, Linux would have been a hobby OS that died out in the early 90s. We'd be using things like Windows Server, Unix, etc.

This ignores the entire existence of FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD.

> they'd have heavy DRM schemes, obfuscation, cryptographic licensing

This ignores the existence of heavy DRM schemes, obfuscation, kernel-level anticheat spyware, criminalisation of copyright-circumvention schemes, etc.

At this point, I think you're just trolling, so I'll stop here.

> It's much easier to upstream your desired changes than maintain a separate fork (closed or otherwise) long-term. Additionally, many of the contributors have been using it for own servers, not required to contribute back.

Then why is ~75% of the kernel from corporate commits today? You think large tech companies just started to become coincidentally generous with the advent of Linux?

> This ignores the entire existence of FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD.

The BSD are quite niche in install base and highly rely on GPL'd ports from Linux.

And, by far the most popular OS in the BSD family tree is MacOS, which is primarily closed source.

> This ignores the existence of heavy DRM schemes, obfuscation, kernel-level anticheat spyware, criminalisation of copyright-circumvention schemes, etc.

I'm not ignoring it, I'm telling you that would be more common, if you remove the all of the other mechanisms by which a company could choose. Without any legal controls whatsoever, the only option to control the use of a company's software would be through technical means. Removing other options would be incentivizing this.