The point, for me at least, is to increase the total volume of freedom in the world. Here is a radical thought: Western Civilization hasn't reached "freedom peak". The freedom level can continue to rise or it can decrease. Peasants in the Middle Ages probably thought they were free. We think we are free. How silly do we think those peasants were? How silly will future generations think we are?
It depends. If everyone just shrugs their shoulders, then we can easily slide back to the Middle Ages. Freedom is not monotonically rising all the time. What I, who likes computers much more than people, can do to generate freedom is write free software. It's not much but it provides value and proves that valuable stuff can be produced without a profit motive and that salary slavery isn't necessary to ensure that good software is programmed.
That's why I like the GPL. In a way that is saying "This is highly valuable software, but you can have it for free, provided..." vs BSD "Do whatever you want with this shit I just wrote for fun." Free software is great fun and I contribute to it only because I like writing code, but as a side effect of that I'm also, well, improving the world one tiny step at a time.
It depends. If everyone just shrugs their shoulders, then we can easily slide back to the Middle Ages. Freedom is not monotonically rising all the time. What I, who likes computers much more than people, can do to generate freedom is write free software. It's not much but it provides value and proves that valuable stuff can be produced without a profit motive and that salary slavery isn't necessary to ensure that good software is programmed.
That's why I like the GPL. In a way that is saying "This is highly valuable software, but you can have it for free, provided..." vs BSD "Do whatever you want with this shit I just wrote for fun." Free software is great fun and I contribute to it only because I like writing code, but as a side effect of that I'm also, well, improving the world one tiny step at a time.