What you are describing must have been written by someone who does not believe in software freedoms.

That seems to be a common sentiment, that preferring non-GPL projects is about exploitation, and I don’t think it makes any sense. The GPL is a contact that takes away some rights of the people using it, and that makes everyone freer? I understand the goal of wanting users to have rights that they would not otherwise have, but binding every developer in the hope of eventually binding multinational organizations seems like an awfully high price to pay.

  I've made lots of money and I publish every piece of code I've ever written to do it.

If only this were the common case. I once asked Stallman if he had any ideas on how we might make that more common, and all he said was it wasn’t his problem. I agree that it’s not his problem, but the prevailing solution seems to be to avoid the GPL. I think that many people would love to hear your thoughts on it.

> The GPL is a contact that takes away some rights of the people using it, and that makes everyone freer?

It is not that simple. The GPL "takes away" some rights of the distributor of the software (their ability to restrict redistribution for example), but grants rights to the end user (the ability to modify and redistribute) of the software.

It's all perspective. As the developer the GPL may feel limiting, but as a user it is liberating.

I don't think you've really clarified anything. It is a trade: ensuring greater freedoms for the end user by adding restrictions -- by definition "not freedom" -- to developers/distributors.

I'm not saying that's a bad trade off to make, but it is absolutely a fact that the GPL takes away some rights. Or, since it is a copyright license, where the default in copyright is you get no rights, you might instead say it does not give all possible rights. I think it's important to recognize that sometimes "the greater good" comes at a price.

> it is absolutely a fact that the GPL takes away some rights.

Expressing it like you did is misleading. One man's freedom is another man's restriction. It's two sides of the same coin.

It is absolutely a fact that laws against murder take away some rights. Suddenly you are not allowed to kill other people. You do not have that "freedom" anymore. Flipside is that others now have the freedom to walk around without fearing that they can lawfully be killed by others. You pay for granting one "new" freedom by removing another, opposing freedom.

The GPL grants new rights for a party by restricting rights of another party. Just like all licenses do.

> I've made lots of money and I publish every piece of code I've ever written to do it.

I'm curious to know what your personal method is. Consulting, paid support, proprietary dual-licensing maybe? There are indeed many ways to make money and still publish code as FOSS; the tricky thing, as always, is to work out which way is the right one for you.

For most people, a pile of software is not nearly enough. They need help of every sort to use it effectively.