My apologies if this is slightly inflammatory, but in my opinion preferring BSD-style licenses over copyleft licenses is both selfish and elitist (or classist, if you will).
It's an attitude which says that as long as the elite class of techies get freedom to do as they like, that's good enough. The freedom of the end-users does not matter, even to the point that when Free Software advocates ask developers to take their end-user's freedoms into account, that request is met with outright hostility.
It's a very selfish and one-sided type of freedom. Freedom for us, not for them. Freedom to oppress, monetize and lock-in the peons who don't know how to code.
> It's an attitude which says that as long as the elite class of techies get freedom to do as they like, that's good enough. The freedom of the end-users does not matter
I actually don't see the additional restrictions in the GPL as doing much for end users, per se. The real beneficiaries are still developers, just developers one level further removed from the licensor than the beneficiaries of the freedom in permissive licenses. But if you think that a substantial portion of the people using your work under a permissive license are themselves likely to offer a Free/Open license (whether permissive or copyleft), a copyleft license actually may reduce the freedom actually experienced by the indirect beneficiaries as well as that experienced by direct licensees.
Permissive licenses give freedoms for techies and users equally. If it's free for one, it's free for the other.
Less permissive licenses, and the GPL in particular, restrict both users and techies.
Users can be subject to oppression, monetization and lock-in if they are willing. But it is their choice. And if they so want, they can grab that free code and hire a developer to "oppress, monetize, and lock-in" the other guy. If he is willing to be oppressed.
> It's an attitude which says that as long as the elite class of techies get freedom to do as they like, that's good enough.
Well, no.
The question (if you read the blog post I linked to) is whether you go for institution-centric and centralizing controls here or whether you go for decentralized controls and questions of community structure.
The point is the best protection for everyone is widespread ownership over private property. Ownership means "the right to use" here. The BSD licenses demand greater community controls because the community cannot survive without them.
> Freedom to oppress, monetize and lock-in the peons who don't know how to code.
And yet, if you demand that there be a stronger power capable of preventing oppression, then you typically get stronger organizations more capable of oppression. The end goal is, really, to decentralize and ensure that end users have a choice of what to use.
Interestingly I am living in Indonesia right now. It is amazing to see a Distributist economy in motion and see that, although the nation is poor on paper, the society functions for the poor much better than it does in the US, and so real poverty is far less of a problem. Sure the poor may have fewer television sets than in the US but they do have better access to housing and wholesome, nutritious food.....
The reason why things work so well is because the economy is so heavily decentralized. 70% of the economy is self-employed. Self-employment means that capital and labor are not separate. This is what the freedom to produce things with the software has to offer our economy.
What freedom does BSD takes from users? Users are equally welcome to use BSD code.
BSD allow anyone to do anything to BSD code. GPL prevents developers from doing everything to GPL code. That says more about users being selfish and eilitst than the other way around.
Why? Just because they are end-users means they are better then me? That's exactly selfish right there.
It's an attitude which says that as long as the elite class of techies get freedom to do as they like, that's good enough. The freedom of the end-users does not matter, even to the point that when Free Software advocates ask developers to take their end-user's freedoms into account, that request is met with outright hostility.
It's a very selfish and one-sided type of freedom. Freedom for us, not for them. Freedom to oppress, monetize and lock-in the peons who don't know how to code.