When people in the US talk about freedom, they seem to only focus on the freedom of them to do what they want and disregard the possibility that their actions might have side effects.
But re: limiting freedom: Do you think that giving everyone the freedom to kill people would be a net improvement of the freedoms of people when you take into account that people who are killed don't have any freedom at all.
It's so easy to say that freedom means that "I should be able to do what I want without regard for others". But thinking of freedom only in the active sense is an extremely naive idea of freedom. What about my freedom to remain free of the consequences of your actions?
Concrete example 1: SUVs disproportionately transfer risk to the occupants of smaller vehicles in the event of a collision. Is someone's freedom to choose to drive an SUV more important than my freedom to drive a Miata without undue risk of being killed by your SUV? Why do you think your lifestyle choice should be more important than mine?
Concrete example 2: In the US, some people think it's an essential freedom to be allowed to own firearms. This has lead to a proliferation of firearms which means that the US has the highest rate of gunshot deaths of any modern country. Why should people's freedom to own a firearm be more important than my freedom to go about my business without worrying about getting shot?
My point is: there's always a tradeoff. Not acknowledging that tradeoff is either disingenuous or naive.
It's so easy to say that freedom means that "I should be
able to do what I want without regard for others".
When you use my code I want you to be restricted. I want you to make all your changes publicly available to everyone, and if you make a hardware device that runs my code, I want you to make it possible for users to modify my code and be able to run it on that device.
If you don't want to agree to my conditions, don't run my code.
But this isn't about taking away freedom; I want there to be more freedom. Because of the conditions I impose, anyone can build off your work in addition to my work. More code, more freedom.
This phrasing was careless: it sounds like you want to prevent private modifications (freedom 1).
You're not the only one to make this mistake. Because of it, many people think the GPL forbids private modifications. Many don't like it because of this misconception, so we should mind our words.
Of course, I agree with the gist of your post.
I'd say only this: if the GPL gets in your way, that's
because you want to distribute proprietary software, right?
What does this mean?