Lots of people who would otherwise be Linux or BSD users instead use OSX. Consequently, they are not free to modify their operating systems where (had it not been for Apple) they would have been. Their freedom has been reduced voluntarily, but it has been reduced.

Forking FreeBSD is not remotely the same thing as forking OSX and you can't "just use the open-source alternative if they want to change the source code" of OSX.

Their freedom has not been reduced, as they are still free to choose an alternate, FOSS operating system if they prefer. Instead, they have access to more options than they otherwise would have, because it's highly unlikely that Apple would have expended so much effort in improving their OS, which is a competitive advantage for them, if they were forced to turn over all of that work to anyone who wanted it.

I really don't like the idea of licences which compel their users to act in a certain way. Freedom cuts both ways.

Software freedom has a specific meaning which necessarily encompasses freedom to study and modify the software you're running.

OSX users do not have this freedom. Hence, prevalence of OSX reduces software freedom. Ability to choose between OSX and alternatives is something but it is not software freedom.

> OSX users do not have this freedom. Hence, prevalence of OSX reduces software freedom.

This doesn't follow. Like most arguments about proprietary software reducing, rather than not providing, software freedom, it seems to rest on the assumption that if proprietary software did not exist, it would be replaced use-for-use with Free software, that is, that license models have no impact on the creation or distribution of software.

That's why this rhetoric is dishonest. It's the use of this specialist meaning of the word freedom in a way which is opposite to it's conventional meaning.

If you stop using this misleading word, the whole GPL thing looks more reasonable, but also less like a moral crusade.

Not really. Freedom to modify your software is a kind of freedom which cannot exist when you are exercising your freedom to use proprietary software. Like many things in our world, it's a tradeoff.

This is doublespeak. You are conflating the words freedom and choice.

That seems like a narrow definition of software freedom , but in that case I'd argue that the utility gained from software freedom is not as valuable to users as the incentive gained by developers for being able to distribute their software under a more permissive licence.

There's never a need to distribute software under a more permissive license except enabling distribution of software under less permissive licenses.

That's a very important need.

You're going to need to elaborate, for discussion to be useful.

So that people can make money out of software and incentivize its development.

If such an amount of software is being produced under the GPL that inability to borrow from that pool of work is significantly hampering proprietary development, I'd say it's plainly false that this is the only way to incentivize software development and quite possibly the case that it's not the best way.

So your absolutist position about "there's never a need..." translates into a dislike for paid software as a business model.

What business models for software do you prefer, and why?

You removed my qualification, attributed the result to me, and called it an absolute position. I would not make, with confidence, the statement "There is never a need to release under a more permissive license." To get there from what I said, you would need "There is never a need to distribute under a less permissive license." I do think this need is exaggerated, but labeling that "absolutist" strikes me as odd.

I have no objection to "paid software" as a business model, because the term is too broad. Paying someone to add a feature I want to a GPL project and release the result is, I think, not something anyone would object to. I have objection to "proprietary software" as a business model, because it collapses the value that the software can provide; I am not convinced that this objection is sufficient to say that proprietary software is always the wrong choice. I have more objection to proprietary software where, having paid, I cannot see the source and make changes (or pay others to make changes).

There are a number of alternatives for funding development of mass-market software that are more compatible with copyleft licenses (donations, threshold pledge models, consulting) and I'm currently working on an innovative project in this space.

Freedom has still not been reduced. This so-called gain in freedom of OSX users to modify the code has come at the expense of a corresponding loss of freedom of Apple to choose whether to release their code or not.