this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2026
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Programming
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No one. What people give a shit about is the license that is supposed to keep the code open, which is being removed for profit without consequence.
In our current legal system, copyright is the basis for me to be able to set requirements on how my code can be shared. I do not care that I own it, I just care that it is shared under the conditions I set.
Without being able set these conditions, I would not open up my code.
If nobody owns the code, then then nobody can enforce the terms of the license it was released under, and free software under the FSF definition becomes impossible. All you have is public domain.
For example, a company could take the Linux kernel, modify it and distribute it with their gadgets. And they could simply not release the modifications they've made, as is required by the GNU Public License. But nobody would be able to do anything about it. Currently, copyright laws allow the people who wrote the Linux kernel to sue the company for breaking the license and violating the authors' copyrights