Do you also support closed source software companies being able to rip off any open source code released under a copyleft license? Because the legal recourse offered to them relies on the same mechanism.
I'm not lo_fye, but in my opinion, if we can get full elimination of copyright (and software patents, must be both), the trade is absolutely worth doing, even though I currently license my own work as AGPL.
If source code is no longer copyrighted then all software is at least free-as-in-beer as well as free to be decompiled and reverse-engineered. Source code would presumably be something along the lines of a trade secret, but it would be incredibly easy to rip off unless you compartmented access to a degree that completely kneecapped development.
And being real honest here, if closed-source companies want to rip off ideas from open source, they go right ahead and do it. A lot of time they will even go ahead and rip off the implementation/source too. Occasionally they get caught but it's rather difficult to identify violators. Once you do so you need to out-lawyer violators who have significantly deeper pockets than the FSF.
Whether or not society would be better off without copyrighted software is left to the opinions of the reader - but I think it's absolutely undeniable that open source development would gain an immense competitive advantage compared to an infinitesimal gain by closed-source development.
