because, it gives the user the freedom to use a program and then modify it to suit their own taste, and to give that same freedom to any person using their version.
That's a naive, dreaming view. RMS and others at FSF were and are realists. GPL isn't an empty political statement.
> it gives the user the freedom to use a program and then modify it to suit their own taste, and to give that same freedom to any person using their version
Yes, that's what the license says, more or less. But that alone isn't interesting. Look instead at the first-order consequences. Look at what these statements do.
Or, in other words, as you read code, don't focus on syntax but on what the program will actually do when run.
My claim here is that Stallman and the FSF have a very realistic view of the world. The Free Software isn't about empowering individuals - it's about empowering communities. And communities, in the real world, always have some form of internal economy - be it favor-based, gift-based or money-based. They have a form of specialization of labor. They're also embedded in the larger local and global economies, and to survive, they need to be productive participants. Free Software isn't preventing people from making money on software - it's just counteracting the natural tendency for software to turn into capital and concentrate in the hands of the few. That is, it protects people's ability to make money via the software (should they choose to) from the interests that would build on it, establish exclusive ownership, and use it to seek rent.
FWIW, this became clear to me when I started to look into what the "right to repair" movement is really about. There's a common argument against RtR, that's very similar to a common argument against Free Software: that it assumes or mandates everyone to be a specialist able to fix and improve their devices on their own. But the RtR crowd had a very clear counter to this: it's not about you becoming a hardware engineer so you can fix your own devices. It's about you being able to get a friend, or find a local repair shop, and pay them to fix your device for you. RtR is also expressed in terms of individual freedoms and seemingly orthogonal to monetary issues - but it's been made clear all this is primarily about making the economics of local community repairs work.
Once I grokked that, I realized Free Software has always been about the same thing, but for software.
isn't it interest that people say "you're just arguing over semantics" when they actually mean "you're just arguing over syntax"?
> isn't it interest that people say "you're just arguing over semantics" when they actually mean "you're just arguing over syntax"?
I think I didn't make this mistake here. Or did I? Either way, it's just another unfortunate case of language drift, very similar to "literally" vs. "figuratively".
Say the code, as is, solves 90% of the problem. To get to 100%, you need some changes to be made. That is, you need to get someone - the original author(s), or a third party - to make them for you. They're not obliged to do it for free - only to release such changes for free to everyone's benefit. So you have to pay someone. The license just makes sure everyone benefits, and that incremental benefits need to be only paid for once.
Additionally, code alone isn't a solution. Any kind of deployment, hosting, management, etc. involves labor, whether in-house, hired, or from a service provider. Again, the code commands money to be moved to those providing value by building up on it. The license only makes sure nobody gets to treat the code itself as their exclusively-owned capital.