Re:Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF
by the_af on Sunday March 21, 2021 @09:37PM
(#26535910)
> The reason why they do so is simple: they know they won't be able to make a buck off of it if it was commercial
That's not the reason why someone would choose a copyleft license of the kind the FSF advocates, like the GPL or one of its variants.
You choose a copyleft license because you primarily care about freedom.
Nobody's forcing them to license out their software for free. The reason why they do so is simple: they know they won't be able to make a buck off of it if it was commercial (even with the individuals/small company exemption you mentioned), and that stringent terms will only harm adoption of their project. See for instance companies unwilling to touch GPL licensed software, for instance.
From the corporation/executive's view, why would they bother adopting a piece of software that has a royalty system, especially when there are alternatives? For instance, other projects that are permissively licensed, writing it themselves, or paying for a proprietary/commercial version.