One does not have an inherent right to the work of someone else. Such a right only exists when it is contractually forced by an agreement such as the GPL.
Indeed, that's the point. That's one thing the developer loses when he choses a BSD license over a copyleft one (not just the GPL).
No, it is not a loss. It is simply coveting something one does not have. If you want to say it it unfair, sure, but a loss, no, not all.
Isn't it correct to call "a loss" something that you can have, and then at some point you can no longer have? I get quite a lot of hits on Google for that usage: https://www.google.com/search?...
The point is that with the GPL they cannot commercially fork code written by me. Of course they can do whatever they want with their own code.
They absolutely can use GPL code commercially. Commercial use does nor require distribution to external users. Commercial use simply means they make money off your work, and this is perfectly allowable under the GPL.
use != fork
You forget the pesky little detail that I mentioned that users are under no obligation to use a proprietary BSD fork rather than the community version. They can stick with the community and have no such fear, use FreeBSD rather than Mac OS X for example.
Another loss for the user. With the GPL, I have the freedom to choose the products that I like. With the BSD license, I have to take what the community gives me. And today this means that I might even not have the ability to run the free version of the software on my machine, because its manufacturers might decide (and they usually do) that it's not worth the hassle for them to release the source code of some machine-specific software that is required to use even the community version of the product.
Its also a humorous example given the fact that Android phones with their GPL based Linux host are not getting critical patches.
Quite the opposite. Since Linux is GPL, and only because of that, at least Android phone owners can install a community-driven distribution on their phones. That's because the hardware manufacturers have to release both the kernel and the drivers. For the userspace parts, which fall under different licenses, they don't bother - and that's an endless source of problems for the users.
To make a concrete example, try asking Sony about the source code for the GPL kernel of an Xperia phone. They'll give it. Try asking them about the source code for the BSD kernel of the Playstation 3 and see what happens ;-) .
Yes you mentioned GPLv3 but that was a crude attempt to manufacture a hypothetical, the reality is that Linux is what most devices will be based upon and Linux is inherently GPLv2 and will not be changing.
Are you trying to make the point that the GPLv3 is better than the GPLv2? You're bashing an open door, as I strongly agree with that.
A straw man. No where was your property, the community BSD code, at risk of loss. Only the commercial fork's code, and that code is not yours, it is someone else's property.
We're talking about the mere "forced benevolence is not freedom" statement here. Do you think that the laws that force people not to rob my house give me freedom, or not?
You are under no obligation to use commercial forks. Again, you may stay with FreeBSD and not run Mac OS X. Nothing Mac OS X does or adds takes away from anyone who wishes to use FreeBSD.
Of course I have no obligation to use commercial forks, it's a freedom of choice that I have. Then again, it might become an obligation if the machine that I can buy only runs the commercial flavour of the project. The most relevant example for the case of Mac OS X isn't FreeBSD, it's Darwin. I can download it, compile it, and then I can just look at the binary, because it doesn't contain the drivers required to boot the Mac that runs the commercially distributed version of the same software.
