There are pockets. At MIT, as a student, it was definitely very pay-it-forward. But try starting a company in Boston and getting investment, or introductions, or do any sort of networking. It's literally impossible unless you have some way of scratching their back. I have heard this time and time again from founders that moved from Boston to the valley, and I have experienced it firsthand with my company.

Again I think you're overplaying this. Most of my network has never worked with me and likely would never work for me. But I don't have a particularly hard time getting in touch with anybody I'd like to.

(And if anyone who's reading this would like to chat--well, email's in my profile. Don't be shy.)

The difference between GPL and BSD-like, to me , is that GPL says "what's in it for me?" Whereas BSD-like is "here you go take this for free, I may or may not got anything back for giving you my contribution."

More like "What's in it for the (end) USER?" What better way is there for a developer to pay it forward than to pass on all the rights they got (freedom to modify and inspect the software) to the end-user?

I don't ask anything from you for me in order to use my gpl software, I ask that you give the same rights and privileges you had to your users.

You don't even need to give me your contributions, just your users.