That's incredibly naive. I have modified source of several free projects for independent contractors I know, and I'm hardly a household name.
But you are an exception.
My company has used work-for-hire developers to fix bugs and add enhancements to free software for internal use. You seem to be limiting "support services" to only proprietary-style professional companies that advertise those services in the Wall Street Journal. Open your eyes, my friend - custom modification of free software is ubiquitous. Custom modification for BSD-taken-proprietary is... limited to the company that released the product.
What you described here is paid work. While you choose to make a distinction between being able to hire somebody and firing off bug reports and feature requests to a company in hopes of a fix, the real limitation here is money. If FOSS is so open and everyone participates, why is your company having to hire people to patch your software? That's the real divide - money, not licensing.
The number of projects period is astounding. Some of them are incredibly useful; most aren't, because SourceForge is free. Exactly like SlashDot and posts.:-)
All hilarity aside, you can stargaze all you want but I'm only concerned with things in the useful orbit. The number of software projects with a robust codebase and regular release schedule is small, and only some of them are useful. But again we see that your license of choice isn't helping end-users (by making available worthwhile software) or developers (by helping them to write worthwhile software).
By restricting the developer(s), the GPL restricts the developer down the line - particularly, from taking free code and making it non-free, thus limiting what users can do.
But making for a much more solid product. For a real-world example, let's look at WebKit, the muscle behind Safari, iTunes, iChat, and scads of other software packages. (Check at Wikipedia for an exhaustive list.) Apple took that software and did a lot with it without it being under a Free or Open Source license. It's FOSS now, but hadn't been and the FOSS community has done little to enhance it.
Precisely my argument. BSD license frees the developer to use the code for more projects - specifically, proprietary projects. But proprietary projects limit the freedom of end-users - they cannot fix bugs, or further reuse the code.
They don't anyway, unless they happen to have programming experience and are being paid. The number of hobbyists doing any real (released) work is microscopic in proportion to the number of end-users. And they're probably the same people who have jobs doing whatever it is they do with their GPL'ed software.
GPL protects the user's freedoms by ensuring that free code remains free.
And tying deevelopers' hands with multiple restrictions with a small and dubious benefit to end-users.
Nor does the GPL limit how end-users use such licensed software to implement "potential solutions" in any way, shape or form - in fact, it specifically disclaims any such constraints on the part of end-users.
By restricting the developer(s), the GPL restricts the user down the line. Had the developer had the freedoms that the GPL disallows, he would have had the options to do more with his source code and ideas, which in turn benefits the end user.
And Apple has some nice software, but it is not released under a BSD license. Try adding it to your own proprietary product, and watch the lawyers go into a frenzy! Not much freedom there.
Actually, the APSL is both a Free and an Open Source license, as the two bodies have qualified it. Apple also releases a lot of software under the Apache and Mozilla licenses as well. They do no release anything under the BSD license, the freest of all software licenses, but I can do a lot with Apple's source code anyway, thank you very much.
Allowing developers to improve a package without sharing the improvements also hurts the end-user by limiting the rate of overall improvement in software, and by potentially preventing the end-user from obtaining support from a different source
This is a common tactic in arguing for the freedom of the GPL. In practice, there are few if any products that have the momentum behind them that their end-users will have a variety of support sources. End-users certainly won't contribute much more than bug reports, if that. Have you checked SourceForge lately? The amount of abandoned or stillborn projects is staggering.
(how many vendors can patch that OS X kernel? I'll wait while you count... Oooonnnneee. Right!). Very much "less free". And as a side "benefit", the rate of improvement for the software is dampened by duplication of effort and reduced collaboration. (How much of Mac OS X has migrated back into *BSD? Not much.)
And this is exactly why Apple products run as you expect them: one developer, one widget. Consistency. Compare and contrast that to the thousands of Linux distributions, the different kernel trees (Cox's, Linus's), and the scads of patches - the most user unfriendly system out there. This isn't about "freedom" at this point anymore, the word is silly in this context. Apple being the only one to patch its own kernel is an advantage its end users enjoy.
And Apple has shared a lot back with FreeBSD, do a google search and see for yourself.
The GPL has been a huge boon to end-users in both quantity and quality of products - as this particular one has noticed and appreciated over many years. Have you noticed how many GPL'd packages have been ported to Windows? How about that nice Mac interface? Hmmmm.
Quite a few, sure. But "more than nothing" isn't a lot. See above.
I have nothing against BSD, it looks like a pretty nice system. And Apple certainly has some nice, very proprietary software. But to claim it is "more free" for end users than any GPL system is simply disingenuous.
What's disingenuous is your argument. The GPL has more restrictions within it than the BSD license, period. The developer is freer to do what he wishes with his project when using the BSD license. The GPL hinders those choices and also makes the developer do more work.
Actually the GPL is less Free for both end-users and developers. Since the GPL dictates the possibility and type of interface between Free and non-Free software, end-users will often find potential solutions impossible when using something released under the GPL. What the GPL actually benefits is the code itself as well as Richard Stallman's idea of "Free," each of which requires several restrictions on use. The BSD license, while not perfect, has no such restrictions and allows developers to use source code in any situation they deem appropriate and allows end-users powerful solutions - such as Apple's Mac OS X - that aren't possible under the GPL.
Slashdot Mirror
But you are an exception.
What you described here is paid work. While you choose to make a distinction between being able to hire somebody and firing off bug reports and feature requests to a company in hopes of a fix, the real limitation here is money. If FOSS is so open and everyone participates, why is your company having to hire people to patch your software? That's the real divide - money, not licensing.
All hilarity aside, you can stargaze all you want but I'm only concerned with things in the useful orbit. The number of software projects with a robust codebase and regular release schedule is small, and only some of them are useful. But again we see that your license of choice isn't helping end-users (by making available worthwhile software) or developers (by helping them to write worthwhile software).
But making for a much more solid product. For a real-world example, let's look at WebKit, the muscle behind Safari, iTunes, iChat, and scads of other software packages. (Check at Wikipedia for an exhaustive list.) Apple took that software and did a lot with it without it being under a Free or Open Source license. It's FOSS now, but hadn't been and the FOSS community has done little to enhance it.
They don't anyway, unless they happen to have programming experience and are being paid. The number of hobbyists doing any real (released) work is microscopic in proportion to the number of end-users. And they're probably the same people who have jobs doing whatever it is they do with their GPL'ed software.
And tying deevelopers' hands with multiple restrictions with a small and dubious benefit to end-users.
By restricting the developer(s), the GPL restricts the user down the line. Had the developer had the freedoms that the GPL disallows, he would have had the options to do more with his source code and ideas, which in turn benefits the end user.
Actually, the APSL is both a Free and an Open Source license, as the two bodies have qualified it. Apple also releases a lot of software under the Apache and Mozilla licenses as well. They do no release anything under the BSD license, the freest of all software licenses, but I can do a lot with Apple's source code anyway, thank you very much.
This is a common tactic in arguing for the freedom of the GPL. In practice, there are few if any products that have the momentum behind them that their end-users will have a variety of support sources. End-users certainly won't contribute much more than bug reports, if that. Have you checked SourceForge lately? The amount of abandoned or stillborn projects is staggering.
And this is exactly why Apple products run as you expect them: one developer, one widget. Consistency. Compare and contrast that to the thousands of Linux distributions, the different kernel trees (Cox's, Linus's), and the scads of patches - the most user unfriendly system out there. This isn't about "freedom" at this point anymore, the word is silly in this context. Apple being the only one to patch its own kernel is an advantage its end users enjoy.
And Apple has shared a lot back with FreeBSD, do a google search and see for yourself.
Quite a few, sure. But "more than nothing" isn't a lot. See above.
What's disingenuous is your argument. The GPL has more restrictions within it than the BSD license, period. The developer is freer to do what he wishes with his project when using the BSD license. The GPL hinders those choices and also makes the developer do more work.
Actually the GPL is less Free for both end-users and developers. Since the GPL dictates the possibility and type of interface between Free and non-Free software, end-users will often find potential solutions impossible when using something released under the GPL. What the GPL actually benefits is the code itself as well as Richard Stallman's idea of "Free," each of which requires several restrictions on use. The BSD license, while not perfect, has no such restrictions and allows developers to use source code in any situation they deem appropriate and allows end-users powerful solutions - such as Apple's Mac OS X - that aren't possible under the GPL.