The Stallman/FSF conception of "free software" is about communism, though. You don't need to give everything away for everything to be free. A copyfree licens

The Stallman/FSF conception of "free software" is about communism, though. You don't need to give everything away for everything to be free. A copyfree license (BSD license, MIT/X11 license, OWL, et cetera) is just as much a "free software" license as a copyleft license, but doesn't make developers beholden to other developers and to the code itself. Rather, it makes the code beholden to developers and users, without making developers and users beholden to other developers and users. The truth of the matter is that we're probably going to continue to see an increase in corporations using the GPL and (more to the point) other mutually incompatible copyleft licenses, because copyleft licenses can be extremely valuable for those who want to maintain control of the codebase while still getting the benefits of open source software, thus providing a way to sucker competitors into supporting your software "product" while still keeping an anticompetitive advantage by way of the MySQL AB business model and other ways to combine the GPL with proprietary licensing for market domination profit. So, in summary . . . yes, it's true that "free software" in general isn't necessarily communistic or socialistic, but copyleft licensing in particular does bear a striking resemblance to various principles of communism and socialism. Just like communism and socialism, it also tends to get co-opted by market dominating monopolists and their ilk.