Comments by "Traveller" (@traveller23e) on "The Winamp Situation Is Crazy" video.

@jan_harald The GNU project might try to sue the original or current devs, but I suspect that several of the more aggressive companies are absolutely going to sue regardless. It's a chance to make an example of someone who dares to fuck up around them.
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Though it's honestly pretty sad that open sourcing a closed-source project normally requires making sure you haven't done anything too illegal. I wish they would just require all copyrighted code to be sent in source form to the relevant authorities.
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@maybenations I might just send it in the mail, printed on paper in Comic Sans
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@puertoricanguy999 Maybe not free as in beer though
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@futuza Well, in the world we live in anything writing-related that is produced is implicitly copyrighted even without an explicit notice. However, with most mediums in order for anyone to appreciate the copyrighted work, such as a book, they have to have access to the "source code" i.e. you can't usefully simultaneously copyright it, prevent people from seeing it, and sell it. Software is different, and as a result it's often impossible to know what third-party copyrighted material has been illegitimately included in a proprietary project. Thus, if there were some requirement of transparency of source (either via central agency or by requiring software distribution to always be done in a source-available fashion) it would in my opinion be beneficial to consumers and open-source authors.
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