> BSD doesn't remove any freedoms from the original software author
Neither does the GPL. The GPL does not place restrictions on the author. In fact, as the author of a project, you can declare your project GPL and totally fail to comply with the GPL yourself, because the license is a copyright license, not a contract.
> To put it another way, once you license something under GPL, it is forever GPL. That's a strength of that license in the sense that it has allowed so much excellent and important software to grow and flourish.
Both the GNU GPL and BSD licenses are non-revocable (except, in the case of the GPL, if a reuser violates the license)
> On the other hand, when you license something under BSD, at any point you have the power to take it to another license or make it proprietary.
Assuming "you" refers to the author of a project, they can change the license they use for the project in the future regardless of whether they initially chose BSD or the GPL.
(I'm on the Debian ftpmaster team, which checks all new binary packages submitted to Debian; I review licenses for fun)
Neither does the GPL. The GPL does not place restrictions on the author. In fact, as the author of a project, you can declare your project GPL and totally fail to comply with the GPL yourself, because the license is a copyright license, not a contract.
> To put it another way, once you license something under GPL, it is forever GPL. That's a strength of that license in the sense that it has allowed so much excellent and important software to grow and flourish.
Both the GNU GPL and BSD licenses are non-revocable (except, in the case of the GPL, if a reuser violates the license)
> On the other hand, when you license something under BSD, at any point you have the power to take it to another license or make it proprietary.
Assuming "you" refers to the author of a project, they can change the license they use for the project in the future regardless of whether they initially chose BSD or the GPL.
(I'm on the Debian ftpmaster team, which checks all new binary packages submitted to Debian; I review licenses for fun)