The GPL has always included restrictions on how you can use the code and forces you to license the whole as GPL if you derive your own product from a GPL origin

The GPL has always included restrictions on how you can use the code and forces you to license the whole as GPL if you derive your own product from a GPL original. GPLv3 advances that into ensuring those freedoms in other cases (patents and locked down hardware). It's not that you can't commercialize GPL software, it's that while doing so you need to still ensure a set of freedoms for the user. That's the essential part of freedom as defined by the FSF. See the 4 freedoms (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html). It took a long time for companies to accept the GPLv2 restrictions when developing products and now some are balking at GPLv3. Google even has a no-GPL policy for anything on the Android userspace. You can of course disagree with this way of working and prefer something like BSD/MIT licensing instead. I wonder if anyone has done a comparison of how much contribution from commercial entities BSD and GPL projects have generated.