Quote:
Originally Posted by rocket357
If I fork a BSD project and make it proprietary, how am I revoking the rights of people who wish to use the BSD licensed version?
There is a difference between maintaining freedom and maintaining freedom as long as the use-case fits your personal philosophy.
Edit -
I would like to extend my personal definition of freedom, if I might. Freedom is the right to do what you want, when you want, where you want, with whom you want, however you want, in whatever matter you desire, so long as your actions do not infringe on the freedom of others.
If I fork an open source project into a proprietary project and extend said project with proprietary extensions, people have a choice of paying for my proprietary version or freely (typically) using the open source version. I have not revoked their freedoms in any way (I have provided them, to the contrary, with an alternative). If you say I have to now release my proprietary extensions to the world, you are in fact revoking my freedoms.
Control is control, no matter how you cut it.
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I'm the wrong one to debate this with since I'm not 100% one way or the other on copyleft vs. BSD. Basically, my attitude is, "yes please." I'm not creating any free software to speak of so I'll leave to those who do which form of license they prefer. If I were creating software people would use, I'd probably use GPL (unless it seemed useful to BSD people) plus an expressed preference that it not be used in military use -- not a license restriction just an expressed wish, enough to make certain folks nervous enough about me they wouldn't want to use my software.
I'll only remind you you started out with, "THAT is what bugs me so much about Stallman. He has a very narrow definition of "open source" and decries anyone who doesn't precisely meet his definition." Yet you seem to have your ideas of what rights should be ceded in free software licenses and are criticizing people who who prefer copyleft for not following your preferences. Or maybe you just can't get by the use of the word free. I'd recommend Jeremy Allison's thoughts on that. If I recall, the BSDers who were harrassing him with this argument he in exasperation told, "fine, you can have the word free, whatever." Point is you don't have to use GPL software if it's that bothersome to you not to be able to include it in non-GPL works and that they're not unclear about what they're trying to accomplish with copyleft.