What about violating software licenses? I guess the restrictions of the GPL are moot then. I can just do whatever I want as I'm really not depriving anyone of anything they didn't already have.
Yes, the restrictions of the GPL would be moot if there were no copyright.
Treating source code as intellectual property is exactly what spawned GPL in the first place, as it is a "hack" that exploits the nature of software licensing.
That's not true. The GPL wouldn't be unnecessary, it would cease to work. The GPL relies just as much on copyright laws to work as does proprietary software. Something that is disallowed with the GPL is taking the source code, making a modification, compiling it, and then only distributing the binary. There is nothing that prevents this but copyright law.
A correct statement would be that the BSD or MIT licence would be unnecessary (except for their clauses that you have to include the copyright notice with your modified program).
It was a bit of a rambling point, but relates to the double-standard I see often applied. Terms like "piracy" and "stealing" aren't applicable because there's no physical good (although there's hardly any ambiguity over what's being discussed) and no one is being deprived of anything. But, hey, we need the GPL to ensure everyone shares everything and we need to go after those that violate the GPL. Although, quite arguably, the same logic could be applied: it's not stealing, I'm not taking anything you don't already have, and I don't need to share because I wasn't going to anyway, but maybe my friend will hear about it and contribute a patch to make your project better! [Please forgive the liberal use of pronouns.]
