Unfortunately, there is no clear answer to this in the law, and no apparent pattern to judgments.
Making a copy of the software, including uploading it to a filesharing service, would be copyright infringement. Unauthorized alteration to the code would also be infringing.
You cannot find the complete source code of Google Chrome. It is because of the copyright they have over the code.
US Code Title 17 Circular 92 is a good source for copyright and related laws.
FOSS stands for Free Open Source Software and is often referred to as Free Software. This software allows individuals to rightfully use, copy, alter and study the any part of its' source code without copyright infringement.
Not at all. Both Unix and Windows are trademarked and copyright protected so they cannot share a common code base.
The notification may be at the bottom of each page (as here), on a separate "about" page, in the source code, or nowhere at all. A notification is not required for protection.
The Computer Software Copyright Act of 1980 extended copyright protection to computer programs, recognizing them as literary works under U.S. copyright law. This legislation aimed to safeguard the rights of software developers by preventing unauthorized reproduction and distribution of their programs. It also clarified that both source code and object code are eligible for copyright protection. Overall, the act helped foster innovation in the software industry by providing legal protection for creators.
It must be freely distributed without restriction and the source code must be available.
The source code is openly available to anyone at no cost (excluding minor copying costs), to study, to improve, etc. However unlike public domain source, open source is copyrighted so that it will stay open (one of the clauses in the copyright requires that if you distribute your changed version you must make that version open source under the same copyright wording). You are allowed to take and sell the executable of open source code, especially if you plan on providing support for it to your customers; but all fixes and upgrades must remain open source so others can examine them, study them, improve them, etc.
Copyright affects what you can do with others' existing material, and what others can do you yours. If you're designing a web page, you want to ensure everything from the code to the sounds and images is either copyright-free or properly licensed. In exchange, you can claim copyright on the resulting page, and stop others from using it without your permission.
GitHub Copilot could potentially infringe on copyright laws by generating code that closely resembles existing copyrighted code without proper authorization or permission from the original creator. This could lead to issues of plagiarism and intellectual property infringement.
Decoding a Zend Guard encoded PHP file is generally not straightforward, as this encoding is designed to protect the source code from being easily read or modified. If you have the original source code or the license to access it, your best option is to contact the vendor or developer for assistance. Attempting to decode or reverse-engineer protected files without permission may violate copyright laws and terms of service. Always ensure you have the right to access and modify the code before attempting any decoding.