I don't know why, but this argument seems to be perennial when it comes to FOSS. It's not just from the copyleft side; the recent Commons Clause debacle read so

I don't know why, but this argument seems to be perennial when it comes to FOSS. It's not just from the copyleft side; the recent Commons Clause debacle read something like "to keep our software free, we're going to sell proprietary access to it a little bit". I understand the central complaints that it's hard to keep the lights on writing FOSS, and that when FOSS isn't winning, ideological purity can marginalize it where compromises might do more good overall. But those discussions aren't helped by a baffled "why don't you just accept this?" framing. Disputes like the one between FSF and OSI are explicit about acknowledging and analyzing the tradeoffs between approaches. Nonspecific "FOSS isn't winning!" arguments instead rely on the dodge of "we need to do something and this is something", without stopping to justify what's being changed or why.