No, you're pretty much right on point. Sometimes I like to think of it as the problem with local minima/maxima preventing an optimization algorithm from achiev

No, you're pretty much right on point. Sometimes I like to think of it as the problem with local minima/maxima preventing an optimization algorithm from achieving the global minima/maxima, except applied at large. Put in the context of computer software licenses, one should simply imagine a world where all software were BSD-licensed and then see if open-source as we know it could feasibly continue. Certainly it would in some areas, but eventually if a given open-source project were consistently out-competing a proprietary product, the business being disadvantaged could fork the whole thing at once and turbocharge its now-proprietary development for long enough to supplant the old, open version. Witness what Nokia did with Qt. They poured tons of money into it and turned it in a short time into a mobile-class toolkit that was even more the "Best of Breed". They had so much resource investment that they were able to relicense the whole thing from GPL/QPL to LGPL/QPL. That particular case has turned out alright, but it should be illustrative of the danger of a world with a weak F/OSS ecosystem. Given all the problems we still have with software patents and other IP shenanigans I simply can't rest on the idea that the mere technical superiority of development "in the open" must necessarily and inevitably lead to a world where software is open and available to the users who would need it, without the judicious use of copyleft licenses in the mix along with BSD/MIT-style licenses. They both have their place.