nanotek said:
The BSD license comports with my own libertarian ideals but GPL, to me, exemplifies everything I love about open source.
This has gotten rather far afield from "Why does FreeBSD use the license it does?", but I'd like to point out that the BSD license has been going for 30+ years, and the only changes have been to
remove requirements (advertising, non-endorsement clauses). This, to me, indicates a license that has been very successful at accomplishing its goals.
The GPL, on the other hand, seems more concerned with spreading the GNU philosophy. I'm not opposed to the GNU philosophy (in fact, I was one of the first people who donated after reading the GNU Manifesto). But the changes to the GPL have generally been to "fix" loopholes in the previous versions that some people felt were being unfairly exploited. See
Tivoization. But even the most ardent free software advocates realize that in some cases, the license has to be adapted to the real world, and not the other way around. So gcc and some GNU libraries have less restrictive licenses, because otherwise many companies would simply not use them.
There's a whole industry of "GPL compliance consultants" who will audit your software to make sure you're compliant with every GPL version that your product incorporates. The FSF has every right to pursue companies that use GPL components without following the license requirements - those companies made a choice to use GPL software and should abide by the terms of the license. But companies often discover this long after their product has been designed and shipped. Selection of software (and software license) should happen long before that point.