Suppose someone forked BSD kernel, modified it heavily over years and made a closed source product of out of it (you don't actually need to suppose it anyway). Users get zero out of four freedoms they would have gotten with GPL.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
As a user, you now can't freely run the kernel on multiple computers as you like, you are not allowed to investigate what the binary blob actually does on your hardware, you're not allowed to give a copy to your friend, and you're not allowed to make patches and redistribute. So while this worked very well for some company and allowed them to launch a series of products in series quickly (which translated into billions in revenues), it screwed all of the four basic freedoms for all (paying) users.
Now tell me, how exactly is BSD license going to protect my rights as a user here?
As for the original developers of BSD, I'm guessing they might have been happier if that company contributed (some of) their changes back. Or maybe a few bucks from the billions of dollars they made.
BSD license basically gave the company to screw everyone else, both end users and original developers. Only a free software license such as GPL protects them both.
> make the code more resistant to forks, esp. less free
GPL doesn't have any restriction on forks. At all. Re-licensing and forking are orthogonal concepts.
> opens an option for the original author of code to do dual-licensing
That doesn't have anything to do with GPL itself.
> provides an opportunity for the authors to prevent certain uses of the code
It guarantees that four freedoms mentioned in the above link are protected.
Nope. As a user of a closed source program built on top of BSD or ASL license I certainly don't have the rights I would have had if the bottom layers were GPL. BSD, ASL allows the programmer to (type) cast away the freedoms, they can inherit in private, enjoying the benefits but giving nothing back.
>> As do the BSD and especially(?) the Apache Software License.
> Nope. As a user of a closed source program built on top of BSD or ASL license...
Bam. Got you. You, and the Mac users mentioned in the other comment weren't using open source software.
Users of the original software are still protected.
> I certainly don't have the rights I would have had if the bottom layers were GPL.
You wouldn't anyway. They'd just use something else.
Which means liberal licenses pr def are more free.
Re parasites: do you mean people and companies who use OSS without giving (enough) back, like most of us?
As do the BSD and especially(?) the Apache Software License.
What possibly can be said in favour of GPL is that it:
* make the code more resistant to forks, esp. less free
* opens an option for the original author of code to do dual-licensing
* provides an opportunity for the authors to prevent certain uses of the code
Case in point : there is nothing in either the ASL, BSD or MIT that allows you to go back and make already licensed code less free. The original authors can choose to license their new or existing code under another license as well, as can coders using GPL.
Personally I would be happy if everyone could stop pretending that GPL is more free or respects users more, - as I have tried to show above it does not.
There might still be ideological and even practical reasons to use GPL, but it is NOT more free, possibly less.