This is a simple minded piece. It is so riddled with half digested bs I don't even know where to start with it. I guess I'll just pick on something so blindingly obvious that anyone with more than one braincell (which apparently does not include the author) would already find beyond question.
Copyright protects the expression of an idea. This is an absolutely excellent form of protection when the expression of the idea is a huge part of its value. A piece of music, or a novel IS its expression. If you rewrite James Joyce's Ulysses in your own words you have lost Joyce's expression which is precisely what people value in the reading. Hence a work in which the expression is critical to its value is well protected by copyright.
Software is not such a work. If someone spends years refining an invention and someone else reverse engineers it and yet changes the expression of the work copyright is no protection whatsoever because no-one using the work gives a rat's ass about the underlying expression.
The idea that copyright is a meaningful protection for software is so laughable that anyone daft enough to take the idea seriously is clearly so appallingly badly informed that they don't deserve to be taken seriously.
What if I was the first person to write a murder mystery in which the butler did it? Could I patent that plot device so no one else could use it?
The point of copywriting code is not because people care so much about great coding style or variable names - it's to prevent the laziest forms of copying. If someone wants to invest the time and effort to reverse-engineer and rewrite a piece of software without copying any of the original code, the cost of doing so is sufficiently prohibitive that it might be easier just to rewrite it from scratch.
Clearly anyone who is willing to release software under the GPL does not agree with you about the meaninglessness of copyright protection for software. You would be amazed how many smart, and well-educated people have taken that copyright license, and others like it, seriously.
Copyright protects the expression of an idea. This is an absolutely excellent form of protection when the expression of the idea is a huge part of its value. A piece of music, or a novel IS its expression. If you rewrite James Joyce's Ulysses in your own words you have lost Joyce's expression which is precisely what people value in the reading. Hence a work in which the expression is critical to its value is well protected by copyright.
Software is not such a work. If someone spends years refining an invention and someone else reverse engineers it and yet changes the expression of the work copyright is no protection whatsoever because no-one using the work gives a rat's ass about the underlying expression.
The idea that copyright is a meaningful protection for software is so laughable that anyone daft enough to take the idea seriously is clearly so appallingly badly informed that they don't deserve to be taken seriously.