[nknight]

> Proprietary forks are always able to submit pieces of their code back to the originating BSD project

So are the authors of the GPL project.

> Any improvements they make can NEVER be sent back to us without all the contributors agreeing to license under the BSD license.

You have a very poor understanding of the GPL and copyright law. I'm afraid you've been infected by the "viral" meme.

BSD-licensed code that is incorporated into a larger GPL project is still under the BSD license, even though the larger assemblage may be viewed as being under the GPL. Any improvements made to your code may be licensed under the BSD by the people making the improvements if they so choose.

There may come a point where the code has changed so substantially that GPL'd and BSD'd portions are inseparable, but at that point, what good is their code to you, anyway?

Oh, I'm sorry, did you just want to take all their work and use it under whatever terms you like? Odd, then, that you don't want to give them the same freedom...

[nupark2]

> There may come a point where the code has changed so substantially that GPL'd and BSD'd portions are inseparable, but at that point, what good is their code to you, anyway?

If the code they add is under the GPL, and the aggregate is the GPL, then the only new code retrievable from that project that is GPL code.

> Oh, I'm sorry, did you just want to take all their work and use it under whatever terms you like? Odd, then, that you don't want to give them the same freedom...

It seems like GPL advocates are so focused on the legal enforcement of ideals that there's a systemic failure to recognize the underlying nuanced social contracts.

Re-licensing forked BSD code under the GPL to make it "more open" is simply spiteful -- and is the linchpin of the BSD developers' objections.

The GPL fork will continue to integrate improvements to the BSD code base, and possibly siphon off open-source interest in the project to their fork, but the GPL licensed code will never move in the reverse.

[nknight]

> If the code they add is under the GPL, and the aggregate is the GPL, then the only new code retrievable from that project that is GPL code.

Which is as it should be. You gave them the right to use your code as part of a larger, differently-licensed work. You claim it is because you want people to have freedom. But now you want to beat up on them for exercising that freedom.

> It seems like GPL advocates are so focused on the legal enforcement of ideals that there's a systemic failure to recognize the underlying nuanced social contracts.

Claiming unwritten social contracts should guide behavior is asking to be disappointed. Not everyone will have the same view of what those contracts are. I certainly don't share your views on the subject. What, objectively, makes you right and me wrong?

> Re-licensing forked BSD code under the GPL to make it "more open" is simply spiteful

Please provide some examples of GPL projects claiming that they have made BSD code "more open".

[nupark2]

> Claiming unwritten social contracts should guide behavior is asking to be disappointed. Not everyone will have the same view of what those contracts are. I certainly don't share your views on the subject. What, objectively, makes you right and me wrong?

This nuance is why the BSD license relies on social contracts. Attempting to codify the OSS social contract as license would result in something rather like the GPL, and is at the core of why we disagree.

[nknight]

No, it's not. The core of why we disagree is your bizarre double standard. There are no circumstances under which I would find a corporation's proprietary use of BSD code more socially acceptable than a GPL project's open-source use of BSD code.

This is a fundamental disagreement of principles, not a disagreement about proper enforcement mechanisms. You and I have utterly different views of what the "OSS social contract" is even about, much less says.

[nupark2]

No, it's not. The core of why we disagree is your bizarre double standard.

It's not a double standard. The purpose of the BSD license to encourage widespread adoption which will hopefully lead to widespread contribution, under the assumption that the best way to encourage adoption and contribution is to not enforce it.

If a commercial vendor uses BSD licensed code for a proprietary product, they can and do still donate code back. If they fail to do so immediately, they might do so in the future -- this often occurs as vendors build larger systems on top of a BSD licensed code base.

The GPL, however, is purpose-built to break the social mechanisms by which BSD licensed code propagates by implementing an irreversibly viral one-way licensing OSS ecosystem. RMS has stated repeatedly that he won't be happy until all software is GPL and it's simply not possible to compete with GPL software due to the network effects of large, interconnected GPL-only software stack.

Finally, legal codification of behavior often has large unintended consequences. Choosing to use social pressure to discourage certain uses of your software while not legally forbidding it does not create a double standard.

[nknight]

You appear to have taken a very libertarian worldview and attempted to apply it to software. That's OK, but you have to realize that, as in the political realm, your views are not even close to universal, and some of them are definitely in the minority.

Social contracts are, by their very nature, a reflection of some sort of societal consensus. The societal consensus is not in (full) agreement with you on this matter.

You could advocate your views of what the social contract should be, that's OK, too, but claiming that your minority views are the social contract and that everybody else has to follow them or be somehow "wrong" is, at best, disingenuous.