[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.

[nupark2]

I'm simply explaining the BSD/proprietary viewpoints. They're obviously contrary to the GPL+FSF viewpoint, but they're not logically inconsistent.

In his article, Zed actually said "we're both on the same damn side". However -- barring the use of open hardware reference information across OSS implementations -- that's not really the case.

The GPL and BSD licenses are competitive memes, and the ultimate success of the GPL (as per the FSF's goals) would be at the expense of the BSD and proprietary licenses.

[nknight]

No, you're explaining your viewpoint, and claiming it represents a "social contract".

While I periodically hear whining from some people, particularly the OpenBSD crowd, about other open-source projects using their code, I've seen no evidence of it constituting "the BSD viewpoint".

By the way, the only significant open source software I ever released was under the BSD license. I chose BSD because it made the most sense for what I was trying to accomplish, and specifically did not want to prevent anyone from using the code in any way they saw fit. It would never occur to me to whine about somebody doing just that.