You're free to make forks for your own personal usage and never give anyone the source. You don't even have to tell anyone that you did.

As soon as you share that software with anyone and refuse to hand over the source, and deny the recipient the right to modify and/or redistribute your program, you are taking away that person's Freedom.

>You do not automatically have a right to someone else's creation.

Then why do you insist on taking someone else's creation and basically make it your own by taking away the Freedoms granted to you by the original creator?

If find it highly unethical to want access to Free Software without having to actually contribute to it. It's demanding rights without wanting to have to deal with the responsibilities that come with those rights. It's selfish and greedy.

>I don't mind paying for software

Except money's got nothing to do with Free Software. It's explicitly stated that you're allowed to charge for distributing copies. I'm sick and tired of this "argument". It pops up every time Free Software is discussed here and elsewhere, and the only thing it proves is that the person bringing it up has not understood what Free Software is about in the first place.

I'm not taking away anyone's freedom, unless "freedom" has some definition I'm not aware of. You might be confusing "freedom" with "right", but I'm not taking away any right either unless I specifically violate the license. You do not automatically have the right to someone's work.

> Then why do you insist on taking someone else's creation and basically make it your own by taking away the Freedoms granted to you by the original creator?

It's not a freedom if the original creator forces me to release my code. Do you see how someone forcing me to do something isn't a freedom?

> If find it highly unethical to want access to Free Software without having to actually contribute to it. It's demanding rights without wanting to have to deal with the responsibilities that come with those rights. It's selfish and greedy.

No where did I say a proprietary fork wouldn't contribute back. Merely it shouldn't be forced to open up its codebase. You can make a proprietary fork of a project and still contribute back. I would like the freedom to choose which parts I contribute.

> Except money's got nothing to do with Free Software. It's explicitly stated that you're allowed to charge for distributing copies. I'm sick and tired of this "argument". It pops up every time Free Software is discussed here and elsewhere, and the only thing it proves is that the person bringing it up has not understood what Free Software is about in the first place.

You've missed the other part of that paragraph— the part having to do with Free Software.

However, if I give you a binary of the code, but do not give you source, I have taken your freedom away?

For that to make sense, there must be something you could do before I gave you the binary that you can no longer do. Please name what that thing is.

In short your freedom is an egoistic tactic where you take, use and even abuse but dont care. There are people like RMS who think otherwise; they want a world where everyone shares to everyone so that everyone benefits from all derivatives.

In your quest for "freedom", you're endorsing a license that forces people to do something. Isn't that the very antithesis of freedom?

that "something" is crucial to the argument; GPL forces people to open their sources to ensure the freedom to use/distribute is passed further down the chain and to the future. Think of a BSD-licensed device driver; if a company forks it and makes it proprietary, develops a different but new device and sells the device with the new driver; Neither the users nor I; the original developer will be able to benefit from the derivative work and will end up with an unusable new printer in case the company ends support or does not solve a specific problem. I, as the developer and many users will end up in need to re-invent the wheel and improve the old copyleft driver.

So I the original developer, in case I give away my code with BSD license, end up allowing a permission to someone who does not give the same to everyone (and to me).

That seems like her freedom to you, but it is the freedom for one to end the freedom for many and to the original developer, in the long term, especially considering we all live in the same ecosystem finally. If BSD was ethically/not forceably used by every fork-er, that would be ultimately the same idea with copyleft.

Everytime I am giving away some code, I face this dilemma (I have MIT/BSD contributions too). I don't want to strengthen abusers, and non-contributors.

> Think of a BSD-licensed device driver; if a company forks it and makes it proprietary, develops a different but new device and sells the device with the new driver; Neither the users nor I; the original developer will be able to benefit from the derivative work and will end up with an unusable new printer in case the company ends support or does not solve a specific problem.

How likely is that, though? If you release your code under GPL, they'll just write their own version and keep it proprietary. At least with BSD, you'll have the same base if you needed to rewrite their driver.

A BSD license benefits the market and end user, while a GPL license benefits other developers if they decide to use your code to begin with.

> Everytime I am giving away some code, I face this dilemma (I have MIT/BSD contributions too). I don't want to strengthen abusers, and non-contributors.

I feel the same way, but I'd rather have code people can use without worrying about the license versus forcing other developers to adhere to my personal belief system. Your reason for using GPL sounds like the reason some publishers use DRM: They do not want to give abusers and pirates easy access to their product. With DRM, it only ends up hurting legitimate users while pirates illegally remove it. With GPL, it's not as clear-cut, but I'd imagine there are many projects who have used GPL'd code without releasing their source, while shops who abide by the license but don't want to release their code are forced to reinvent the wheel.

Again, I do appreciate your concern regarding code abuse. I certainly wouldn't like it if a company swiped by code and sold it as their own, but the chance of that happening is slim. I'm much more worried about the small startup who wants to use my library but doesn't want to release their code.

They only have to release their code if they are using someone else's GPL licenced code. They are totally free not to use GPL licenced code, we can argue the semantics of 'freedom' until the cows come home but nobody is forced to use someone elses GPL licenced code.

>A BSD license benefits the market and end user,

It benefits the proprietary market, and if you want your code to be able to be used in proprietary projects then yes, BSD is indeed a great choice. I don't see how the end user is better served by BSD than GPL.

However, many developers pouring hundreds of hours into code they then release as open source do not have any intention of having that code end up in proprietary projects. They want the code to remain open so that they as end users will be able to recieve any enhacements done to their source code. And given the vast popularity of the GPL licence, particularly for open source applications then I'd say it's serving it's purpose.

And don't take me wrong, I think programmers releasing BSD licenced code are extremely generous, and I personally think BSD/MIT style licenced code is a better choice for single purpose library/framework/component style code where there's little risk of proprietary forks.

At the end of the day GPL is about the source code and any further enhancements to it being made available to recipients, and this is what has made it so popular. And while that means it can't be used by proprietary code projects, we have ample proof that it's a licence through which lots of companies chose to cooperatively develop open source code, likely due to the very fact that all distributors of that source code is legally bound to release any enhancements.

It certainly places conditions on the use of code which has been released under it, but it doesn't take away the choice to not use that code.