Re: "Having given the world our software on the most liberal of terms..."
1) A statement of fact, that the GPL is intentionally illiberal, in that it forces contributors to redistribute under the same terms, with no value judgement on this fact
Well that depends on your personal definition of "liberal", and the implied connotations of the phrase "illiberal".
While permissive licenses do attempt to maximise personal liberty, copy-left licenses are liberal in the sense that, though they do make some small sacrifices to personal liberty, it is to the end that liberty is maintained for all.
I would certainly classify copy-left as "illibertarian" though.
2) A statement of opinion, that commercial open source developers today probably prefer Apache/MIT for its simplicity and compatibility with *aaS business practises (cf. VMWare's woes).
Correction: Copy-left and permissive are, with the exception of AGPL, of equal utility in a *aaS environment. This is because copy-left licenses such as the GPL only apply on distribution. If you're operating purely as a service, and not distributing the software itself, the GPL confers no meaningful additional requirements over using Apache.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
