you've just managed to hit my personal pet peeve of the semantics that GPL advocates use in criticizing the BSD license. just because some one else takes a copy of BSD licensed code and makes it proprietary, doesn't mean the original code ceases to exist. If I take a project and license it under the BSD license, it'll always be out there under that license, no matter what happens to derivate works. It doesn't cease to exist in a way that allow people to poke at it and play with it (or even take another copy and run with it). My original code continues to exist. It'll still be there under the BSD license in long run as you put it.