| In a sense, GPL is not free. It is free as in "freedom for society," but it is not free in a selfish, individualistic way. It does not give you freedom to not respect other people's freedom. By using GPL, you sacrifice some of your personal freedom for the good of society. But this is sometimes necessary for progress. >A majority of companies have already decided that their product will be closed-source before they even started designing it. Such a close-minded company does not deserve to benefit from FLOSS Software. If more organizations release their code under GPL, it will give this group of organizations an advantage over the once who prefer closed source license. You can also just dual-license it, and give the companies that want to use your software in closed-source programs a chance to pay you money. >If a closed-source company decides it could use some open-source code in its product, it will do one of two things (if the code is licensed under the GPL): >1. Use the open-source code and not tell anybody >2. Write their own code from scratch If an essential library/framework this company wants to use is licensed under GPL, they may reconsider their decision to release software under closed-source license. And if they are so stubborn as to not even consider using FLOSS Software, then they do not deserve to exist. Newer, more innovative companies will take their place, leveraging the benefits of FLOSS. I also think Linux's popularity over BSD kernels is a great example of why GPL is far better than all the permissive OSS licenses. |
The risk would be that such a market would tempt talent away from the open source ecosystem.