GPL is a more free license if one cares about having control over their computing. The BSD community cares a lot less about that in my (limited) experience and more about purely technical aspects. Which is fine, I just wouldn't expect them to hold if Linux is no longer an option somehow.

I've seen people in #freebsd attack GPL like it was thought up by satan.

That's the problem with BSD, the community holds a large amount of radical ideologies that led them to BSD. Like a deep hatred for systemd or the GPL.

Not the core developers though, just the community surrounding them.

I had many conversations about this and it always came down to business. GPL is indeed restrictive if your priority is the free market. Pretty much every serious BSD person I know of runs it as part of their business, so from their pov GPL is restrictive.

However in the context of the constant restrictions of general purpose computing, GPL has my back. BSD at best doesn't care about restrictive forks and at worst even welcomes them as 'good business'.

Two different approaches, they both have their place but as a user, I feel GPL was written for me. BSD (license) was written for the developer.

This is an oversimplification. I'm sure that some people think like you mention, but it is by no means all. I personally choose permissive licenses because I find the GPL to be hypocritical in the way it restricts freedom while talking about promoting freedom. If I'm giving a gift to the commons, then I want it to be a true gift, not something with strings attached. So for me, permissive licenses are the way to go. It hurts nobody if someone chooses to make a closed source fork - software is a non-rivalrous good, so whatever someone else does cannot take away the free version that I have provided. So I see no reason to deny others the freedom to use my software as they see fit, even if they use it in ways I don't personally agree with.

Thanks for sharing your POV, but that's basically how I understand it. It's the old individual freedom (BSD) vs collective freedom (GPL). The BSD is certainly less hassle and just a simpler way to give something away.

> I find the GPL to be hypocritical in the way it restricts freedom while talking about promoting freedom. If I'm giving a gift to the commons, then I want it to be a true gift, not something with strings attached.

The right to free speech is a freedom too, yet it has strings attached. Namely it's no longer a freedom the moment it crosses a certain line into endangering someone else and their freedoms. That's sort of the view the GPL takes, but it gets into how different political philosophies view the concept of freedom. Is it freedom to pay whatever the free market (in practice monopolies) demand for commodities critical to survival (BSD view of freedom) or is it freedom not to have to worry about not being able to afford commodities critical to survival (GPL view of freedom).

I do agree the BSD freedoms is simpler to grasp.

> It hurts nobody if someone chooses to make a closed source fork - software is a non-rivalrous good, so whatever someone else does cannot take away the free version that I have provided

True in theory, trickier in practice. 'It hurts nobody' only goes so far because if a closed source fork starts collecting telemetry then it actively hurts its users, unless very much opt in. Now how many average computer users are going to know that there's an open version that doesn't do that? A small number. Trickier still, because the fork is closed, it's likely going to be quite hard to replace it or block the telemetry, at least without loosing some features. So again, the difference is in what is viewed as the commons. BSD views the commons as everyone, including capital interests best in a position to take that the software and twist it into a tool in the ongoing war on general purpose computing, ability to repair etc. GPL views the commons as the users, so it aims to grants freedoms to them, even at the cost of restricting the freedom of capital in the process.

In short, I do understand and even appreciate the BSD concept of freedom and its simplicity, yet I find it insufficient to protect my freedom in a system full of monopoly power, corruption and exploitation.

In an ideal world where the behaviour the GPL aims to protect doesn't exist, I'd agree the BSD is more free. In the current world, I'd argue that BSD gives freedom to exploit computer users to those with the means to do so.

A Linux computer is so many things and also nothing at the same time that's is basically impossible that one or N AI company can impose you something like Apple, Microsoft or Google can.

With that said, also or instead using *BSD won't do any harm.