Sharing is Caring (But Advocating Copyleft Makes You a "Target")
THE GPLv3's launch at MIT was 18 years ago [1, 2]. Sure, time flies! At the time I spoke to Linus Torvalds about adopting it for Linux, but he was not interested. Here in Techrights we adopt AGPLv3 by default (for software we develop) because we recognise that GPLv3 does not close all the loopholes which the "Affero" helps close.
An associate argues that "too many sites are [now] misframing non-reciprocal licenses as "permissive". Eben [Moglen] had some quote about non-reciprocal licenses being the ones you want your competitors to use..."
It's not hard to see why; suppose your rivals chose BSD-type licences (or MIT License) for code; you can then take their code without telling them, claim it to be your own, modify it, and never share anything back (lack of collaboration means more wasted effort, too).
In a free society, collaboration - not elimination - is encouraged. But people who failed to achieve things try to eliminate those who do (it's "less work", but if it lacks a basis, it'll backfire).
Back in the days when Professor Moglen was more active publicly (so was Dr. Appelbaum) we saw plenty of advocacy of copyleft. Of course the same people who constantly defame Dr. Stallman also target Dr. Appelbaum, Professor Moglen and now me, Dr. Schestowitz. It's not a coincidence that they also attack Bruce Perens. Aside from obvious antisemitism there's also the aspect of seeking destruction. When all you can accomplish is 3 Git commits in 365 days you start to guess (or foolishly reckon) you can drag everyone else down to your own level. Sooner or later you start boosting BSDs at Linux's expense while constantly defaming the most prominent people in Linux. It doesn't work. Eventually you get sued [1, 2].
Any powerful idea and successful ideology gets challenged. There are not only jealous people out there but also "broligarchs" willing to fund them to attack those ideas. Can they succeed? Not if there's sufficient public backlash and pushback. █