Seriously, it's not the software that's free (as in libre), it's you, to do as you want as long as others who receive your derivative software get the same freedom.
Liberating -- to bring about liberty to those who do not have it
It makes much more sense than "free" software. Why not take the opportunity to have everyone exposed to the name understand exactly what it means and be more intrigued?
With GPL licensed "free software" projects, I am not allowed to distribute in certain ways, locked out of packaging with certain other licensed code in certain ways.
>> Seriously, it's not the software that's free (as in libre), it's you
Except that it's the exact opposite
You're wrong. GPL makes you free like human rights do: You are free to do whatever you want as long as you don't step on other people freedom. With the GPL, you can do whatever you want with the software except prohibiting users to do whatever they want with the software, with BSD you can do whatever you want with the software including prohibiting users to do what they want.
GPL promotes freedom, BSD does not.
The GPL can prohibit me from distributing the program modified to depend on proprietary closed-source code, even if that's what I want to do with the software.
> with BSD you can do whatever you want with the software including prohibiting users to do what they want.
Exactly - the point is that BSD doesn't limit me at all, and the GPL limits me fairly severely. The GPL guarantees that the code under the GPL and all its derivatives will remain free forever - the code is free. The BSD license guarantees that I have the freedom to do whatever I want.
But the BSD allows you to limit what your users can do, the GPL does not. Again, this is how all our democracies and human rights work.
(disclaimer: I am not an advocate of the "free software" moniker/agenda although I happily use and contribute to open source software and don't object to judicious use of the GPL.)
I also wonder what the FSF's response would be if such "within one's organization" use ever would become the predominant way some commercial entity used some GPL software package. I think they would classify that as a hole that needs fixing.
Edit: of course, I may be overlooking that such cases already exist, or that the FSF discussed this (I did browse the GPL FAQ to check the latter, but did not spell it out)
That should've been a wakeup call for free and open software advocates since at least 10 years ago..
So in a definitional sense they may be orthogonal issues, in a practical sense they most certainly are not.
Then, the question is whether a certain proprietary software as enough other qualities to make up for the missing quality of freedom.
Also, freedom is not a pure ethical quality. It means greater independence as well as freedom of action, which both can be very valuable (in dollars), for companies even more then for single users.