A freedom 99.9999% can't even use (because they can't read code or the code in question). These aren't 70s - code for modern applications is huge/complex and requires familiarity with the field to understand - your average programmer can't use the code even if he/she has access to it.
Most people benefit indirectly by using forks created because those rights exits. And you can also pay someone to work on it for you: while this is rarely true for consumer software, we see it all the time in the business world.
The other counter-intuitive reality of GPL is that as long as you keep your changes private you aren't required to release the code to the public.
That's counter-intuitive because, unfortunately, people have the wrong idea about the purpose of the GPL. It's not about giving back, it's about paying-it-forward to the next users. So it makes perfect sense that if you don't have users, the GPL doesn't force you to do anything.
Opensource licenses give you all the practical benefits of free software you need without the downsides.
That's another misconception; the GPL is also an open source license, and the BSD/MIT are free software too.
Almost all open source licenses are free software, and vice-versa.
>Most people benefit indirectly by using forks created because those rights exits. And you can also pay someone to work on it for you: while this is rarely true for consumer software, we see it all the time in the business world.
You're arguing my point here - most people don't care about the code - they care about the derived work - so non-copyleft licenses serve them even better because they allow for more use cases (more forks). Even if my fork is commercial if you're willing to pay for it it means that existing code doesn't serve your purpose - therefore you benefit from that closed source/commercial fork. In most cases the commercial fork would not even exist under copyleft model so you can't argue "they won't benefit from further forks".
>That's another misconception; the GPL is also an open source license, and the BSD/MIT are free software too.
I think it's clear that I meant that "non-copyleft open source licenses give you all the practical benefits of open source without the downsides of copyleft"
You're arguing my point here - most people don't care about the code - they care about the derived work - so non-copyleft licenses serve them even better because they allow for more use cases (more forks). Even if my fork is commercial if you're willing to pay for it it means that existing code doesn't serve your purpose - therefore you benefit from that closed source/commercial fork.
Yes, but the point is to promote forks of forks (and so on). If you close it, the branch dies there.
But then we come back to my original point that you're (GPL people) arguing for ideology (idea that being able to crate forks is intrinsically valuable) and i'm arguing that copyleft means less forks in the first place and that a closed source fork is better than no fork.
Most people benefit indirectly by using forks created because those rights exits. And you can also pay someone to work on it for you: while this is rarely true for consumer software, we see it all the time in the business world.
The other counter-intuitive reality of GPL is that as long as you keep your changes private you aren't required to release the code to the public.
That's counter-intuitive because, unfortunately, people have the wrong idea about the purpose of the GPL. It's not about giving back, it's about paying-it-forward to the next users. So it makes perfect sense that if you don't have users, the GPL doesn't force you to do anything.
Opensource licenses give you all the practical benefits of free software you need without the downsides.
That's another misconception; the GPL is also an open source license, and the BSD/MIT are free software too.
Almost all open source licenses are free software, and vice-versa.