The Linux Foundation: Not a Friend of Desktop Linux, the GPL, or Openness
The argument from the permissive licensing side:The reason some programmers hold GPL in contempt isn't due to picking a sports team. It's really annoying to have to explain to a true believer (of GPL) that it potentially taints codebases it mixes with.It's also a license that's complex and hasn't been tested in across jurisdictions. So arguing about what happens on a message board isn't fruitful since there is no case law. You may be recommended to "see a lawyer". I've spoken to a few people who have, ultimately the lawyer throws their hands in the air and say we don't have answers to the "What if's"; there isn't case law. And at that, the consensus of a random person on the internet isn't going to hold weight if you're accused of violating the terms of the license.It's hard to pick GPL on the merits. Permissively licensed projects don't seem to be having reciprocity issues. Can't remember the last time I heard these thriving BSD, MIT, Apache2, ISC licensed projects complaining about freeloaders.By the way, really happy Nintendo Switch picked up FreeBSD recently. Looking forward to upstream patches, even knowing it's entirely voluntary for them to give back.Why? Because the potential reciprocity from a big player is better than having a license that obligates reciprocity strictly, even punitively. Which could cause them to look elsewhere, to a proprietary solution. No entity wants to risk their hard work to become a derivative of a smaller project they pull in.