How does permissive licensing put food on the table for those who created the code? If anything wouldn't it have the opposite effect?
I quickly put it under MIT, which means though I never saw changes back - something I did helped somebody else teach a class of people HTML. That's doesn't put food on my table, but the same effort from me under a bad licence would have meant that good likely would not have come from my efforts.
If you can have passive income projects that sit there and generate revenue over time without further input, why can't you have passive charitable giving, where you put in effort once and others are able to get value from it over and over again as time goes on.
Permissive licences pay it forward in a way that viral licences don't.
Who is more likely to be hired for paying work: the guy whose code you have benefitted from or the guy whose code you haven't seen?
I believe there is such thing as 'corporate stewardship' and companies ought to give back to the communities that host them. With remote work, and independent workers I believe that responsibility to give back falls on the individual.
I've surely benefitted in my life from open-source software. My income depends on my use of it, so I feel not just a desire but a duty to release work for others in the same way.
It's not direct, but the more code I put out there the more my industry thrives. The more my industry thrives the more work there is in it. The more work there is in my industry the easier it will be for me to find work.
It's a roundabout way of doing it, but I like to think of it as watering the garden I get my food from, instead of harvesting it.
Regardless, all the reasons you're giving for why you prefer permissive open-source licenses also apply to the GPL.
I like public domain, I like MIT, I like libPNG, but I don't like forcing ideology or licenses on people and THEIR code. Take it, learn from it, modify it, USE it. If I didn't want it to be taken and used I wouldbt bother to post it! The GPL gets in the way of that.
It's not just the GPL, this criticism applies to any licence with a viral clause.
I understand that as an author I have copyright and ultimate freedom to licence my code under whatever I choose, but I choose to release my code under non-viral terms.
It's not about posting changes back, I don't care if they fork it and run I just want people to use it. I see viral terms a huge roadblock to this type of creativity.
So there's a solid argument for permissive licenses that excludes viral licenses like the GPL!
If a viral licence is an impediment to people using my work, then releasing it seems like a waste.
I don't agree, there are still enough people who will gain from it. Everyone who wants to learn, everyone who wants to give back, etc. that is not a waste at all, quite the opposite.