[da_big_ghey]

No, the problem is not really a prisoner's dilemma here. Rather, there's a philosophical difference between two parts of the community. Many people don't want to do work for large companies for free, and dislike their work being used without compensation. So, they license it under copyleft licenses. Others (like me) don't really care and mostly write stuff because it's fun and interesting. We publish things under permissive licenses. Even were GPL the standard, I'd probably still use permissive licenses because I don't care where the code is used.

[earhart]

Except... big companies can use GPLd code for free -- they just have to provide their modifications somewhere, and make it possible for users to replace the GPLd part (which is where things typically fall down).

So... if you genuinely don't care, why wouldn't you release software as GPL instead, so that you're not enabling companies to more cheaply provide software that prevents people from making modifications?

(And to be clear, I'm asking as devil's advocate here -- for myself, I have a few personal projects I haven't released, but I've sometimes thought about what license I'd choose if I did; I haven't been able to decide.)

[da_big_ghey]

Because I also value developer freedom. In fact, as a developer, I might value it even higher than user freedom. I've had the irritating experience of finding a good library that's GPL'ed and that I therefore cannot use. Copyleft is great for users and awful for developers. As much as some people hate to hear it, there are industries in which it is not viable to release the source to one's product and remain competitive.