It's also better for software contributors who want to leverage the code in their own products, and use the resulting revenue to contribute back their changes (but not their entire product).

But, for the most part, I think using the BSD license means you're not going to care about the commercial value of your code, because if it's valuable, people will freeload.

Some people will free-load. Many won't. Look at the Apache project, where a vast majority of development is funded by corporations using the software in their closed source products while contributing improvements back to the original product.

In my industry, the GPL has done a servicable job protecting some key software projects (Snort, Nessus, Wireshark).

How do you define "protecting", and what evidence would you use to demonstrate that protection? What would you say those projects were protected from?

This is simply business, not ideology. In terms of ideology, I think there's a simply check for whether Sourcefire meets the criteria of "I love the GPL. Except when it applies to me": Sourcefire could not ever include anyone else's GPL code in their own product without breaking their business model.

From my vantage point, it's the people who produce interesting and valuable code whose interests should come first. Companies who reallllly want to use that code in their for-profit endeavors can buy a license or build their own replacement or open their code; I don't care.

That sounds almost as ridiculous as someone saying:

"You use the GPL license when you want to scare off anyone else interested in using your code."

Seriously, though, there are a dozen examples with the code that runs GitHub to dispute your statement.