"More" or "less" free is a word definition game that is mostly a chimera. It depends on what the purpose of the software is and which business model is the most

"More" or "less" free is a word definition game that is mostly a chimera. It depends on what the purpose of the software is and which business model is the most fit. Copyleft software has several vendors compete around the same product. Every economic actor has to compete to add business value and consulting, with the knowledge that any extension to the software is made available to everyone else. Free and non-copyleft software leaves vendors free to compete with different products built from a common base. Extensions to the software has commercial value and every vendor seeks their local maxima. So the situations are different. GPL and BSD software do not often compete in the same space, with a few exceptions. There used to be a commercial variants of BSD, but they are all gone, outcompeted by a common Linux platform. FreeBSD was technically superior for a long time but couldn't compete with a multi vendor product in the long run. Products that represent a common platform shared by several products however are more successful non-copylefted. Formats such as gzip and jpeg are completely dominant due to their multi product usage, and any GPLd codecs that competed with them are mostly forgotten.