I'm really not sure why software is treated differently from eg. hardware.
Am I allowed to modify my washing machine, if i want to eg. use it for sous-vide? Sure. I might lose my warranty, I might not be able to resell it as a washing machine without disclosing the not-up-to-electrical-code work, but I'm pretty sure the manufacturer can not sue me for modifying it and/or posting an instructional video of how to do it.
Buying software and treating it as a "borrowing" is something that has to be stopped.
> Buying software and treating it as a "borrowing" is something that has to be stopped.
Yeah. Their marketing is all lies too. They show people a "buy" button, obviously leading them to believe they'll own what they pay for. Then they bury people in these insane license agreements nobody even reads much less understands. In these agreements they explain that no, you're not actually buying anything from us, we're just doing you the favor of allowing you to use the product provided you follow these rules, and we reserve the right to take the product away for any reason including no reason, and in that case we'll still keep your money.
Seriously, why is this allowed? In a just world, courts would simply invalidate these contracts in their entirety. It's simply not possible to believe that a normal person consented to anything written in there. The vast majority of people don't even read this stuff. They're trying to buy something but the company keeps showing them these licensing terms they know nothing about so they click next to get rid of it. That's what it means when the company says someone has "agreed to their terms". They annoyed them so much with popups they just clicked accept to make it all stop. They just wanted to buy the product.
Why are normal people even being exposed to the complexities of copyright law and licensing to begin with? This should not be allowed. Nobody should have to care about this insanity. They should just own the stuff they bought, just like they own physical items. People understand buying and ownership. It should be literally illegal for companies to confuse laymen with these legal buzzwords. If they're dealing with other companies, it's fine since it's safe to assume they know better. Consumers on the other hand absolutely deserve protection.
Problem is that when you buy software you often get more code than you paid for, and that code is hidden by a feature flag. Reverse engineering the code and fixing that feature flag is therefore illegal, because otherwise that business model wouldn't work. In practice nobody will sue you as an individual for doing that, but lets say that Microsoft does it to avoid millions in licensing fees, then you have a reasonable legal case against them.
If what you say would be completely legal then many big companies would absolutely start doing that. Do you think that would be a good thing?
It's easy to compile (or transpile in interpreted languages) the code needed to implement a feature flag entirely out of the binary you distribute to customers who haven't paid for it. I don't see that this is a problem.
If I buy a car containing eg. heated seats, but the feature is disabled, because I didnt select the proper addon package, who is going to sue me, if I add a switch, and connect the heating elements to 12V supply myself? Or buy an addon controller? Or even buy addon seat heaters?
In practice, if you buy the car hypothetically containing heating seats but the feature is disabled, then the hypothetical company (that is probably Tesla) will void your warranty and refuse repairs.
Which is a great argument for Right to Repair, but makes everything a hassle on the consumer side - any future interaction with the company around the vehicle is a landmmine waiting to be triggered.
That's certainly the companies' problem. If they don't want code to end up at the customer they can easily remove it from compilation. Not doing that is just laziness.
Am I allowed to modify my washing machine, if i want to eg. use it for sous-vide? Sure. I might lose my warranty, I might not be able to resell it as a washing machine without disclosing the not-up-to-electrical-code work, but I'm pretty sure the manufacturer can not sue me for modifying it and/or posting an instructional video of how to do it.
Buying software and treating it as a "borrowing" is something that has to be stopped.