Open source is a gift to everyone (including Jeffrey Bezos); free software is a sharing economy. The difference is whether the sharing is reciprocal. With open source it's a one way gift from you to Jeffrey. He could have paid you for that. At the very least you can make him pay with reciprocal sharing.
I think you are not describing the difference between open source and free software but the difference between copyleft and permissive license.
Open source and free software licenses are basically the same (there are a few exceptions). For me, the difference is the focus. Free software cares about user freedom first.
User freedom means not giving someone else the freedom to take away user freedom though, which is what doormat licenses (can we call them cuck licenses or is that too far for HN?) do.
> User freedom means not giving someone else the freedom to take away user freedom though
This sentence does a shortcut that's worth expanding on, because it can give the impression that permissive licenses don't respect user rights, and because it doesn't cleanly apply to every situations.
User freedom is full with a permissive license. If I get software under MIT, my freedom is fully respected.
But it is true that forcing downstream developers to respect the freedom of their users through copyleft licenses is one of the strategies to improve user freedom overall (Personally, that's why I prefer the (A)GPL - I'm not keen on helping).
There still are some situations where you might be better off using a more permissive license, when your code is small enough or would strongly benefit from the network effect, for instance if it's a codec, or if there already are alternatives that proprietary software can use [1,2].
That is true. I'm talking general purpose. If you're putting something you made on the internet, and there's a good chance it's useful to someone, I recommend AGPL unless you have a specific argument against it. Also notice that it's easier to grant more permission than to take it away.
