The GPL actually trades off freedom over time. Specifically, it trades away actual freedom right now for the person who currently has a copy of the code, in an attempt to secure potential freedom later for people who do not yet but might someday have copies of the code or of code derived from it.
As such, the GPL is always, in the "now", a license which grants less freedom than, say, the BSD or MIT licenses. Most objections to the GPL, including my own, come from a position of cost/benefit on the trade it wants to make, and of disagreeing that that trade is worth making.
I agree with your first paragraph, but come to different conclusions.
The way I see it GPL values freedom over short-term gains.
You can put BSD software in the AppStore, which is nice short term, but long-term that's helping platform that is a golden cage.
Wouldn't it be nice if Android was GPL v3? Instead of giving operators freedom to lock down handsets and add uninstallable crapware, give users freedom to customize and upgrade their phones. Of course, GPL-Android could have hard time gaining traction in the market because of GPL being unappealing to crapware-installing operators, but if it did succeed, that would be significant long-term win for users' freedom.
Specifically, it trades away actual freedom right now for the person who currently has a copy of the code...
How so? As far as I know, if I have GPL code, I can do whatever I want with it. Could you tell me any action I might want to take that the GPL prevents?
The only "freedom" the GPL removes is the freedom to restrict the actions of others. To me, that seems like a rather odd sort of freedom.
The GPL doesn't prevent you from linking to BSD software.
All it does is prevents you from redistributing the resulting binary under a license that could result in the user's freedom being restricted. I.e., the only thing that is prevented is (BSD, GPL) -> BSD, since the next step might be BSD -> Proprietary.
Right. I want to give others the freedom to use my software in propietary ways, so I put my software under a BSD license. This means I can't use GPL-licensed libraries.
As such, the GPL is always, in the "now", a license which grants less freedom than, say, the BSD or MIT licenses. Most objections to the GPL, including my own, come from a position of cost/benefit on the trade it wants to make, and of disagreeing that that trade is worth making.