You can create your business around service providing rather than using state legislation to coerce people to not reproduce and alter information they know.
I too have phantom nostalgia and longing for anarchist ideals, but that statement relates to life about as much as saying that matter and goods are not property because all molecules of a substance are identical and thus you could make the same things yourself. ‘You could, but you didn't’, as they say.
> you should release all code as free software
In exchange for your complete disregard for the value of the author's time and effort? Dubious arrangement.
> rather than using state legislation to coerce people to not reproduce and alter information they know
Perhaps that's actually somewhat similar to when state legislation says you shouldn't snag matter just because it's lying around? You know, the ‘natural’ and primordial right of capitalist bros that somehow requires police force and surveillance for it to be implemented.
There's a cost to then having to manage the community and being forced to design by committee. There's a lot of control to lose for the developer in respecting user's liberty.
If the code isn't GPL'd or (MPL'd or open-core'd), there's a real and present danger of established firms forking it and making it their own.
That is-- if I'm being skeptical and allowed the liberty to make sweeping generalisations-- there's a lack of ethics with everyone else in this industry.
For example, fullpage.js - the only way the developer could make money is by selling code. Same applies to several javascript libraries.
This type of business model works for complex B2B software, but I'm not so sure it works for most other software.