But if you ask about "Free Software," and take github as data point, I'd say "Free Software" is losing, and is losing because, like proprietary software, it's "over-principled". Young people everywhere, "feel" like content, many forms of "public" data, and the tools to use, create, play, view, and store such content & data ought to be "free as in beer" (or close to it) based on the principle that the effort to copy & transfer data, content, binary, and source is "almost free". Whether there is a restriction in creating plug-ins, linking or modifying code (as in the GPL/Free Software), or copying binaries and/or content as in proprietary software, these are still restrictions.

This is the reason why I prefer the more permissive licenses for my works like the BSD and MIT licenses. Essentially, my work is a gift, in the purist sense, to the entire universe. To place restrictions on my gift is to have given the world a poison and not a gift.

The reason why is easier to understand when you consider the quote by Jim Warren from a 1976 ACM Programming Language newsletter [1], referencing Bill Gates' famous letter to the Homebrew Computing Club, "There is a viable alternative to the problems raised by Bill Gates in his irate letter to computer hobbyists concerning 'ripping off' software. When software is free, or so inexpensive that it's easier to pay for it than to duplicate it, then it won't be 'stolen'."

Said another way, people will continue to do the "wrong" thing so long as it takes less effort than to do the "right" thing. In my mind, we should be incentivizing the "right" things, like openness, sharing, technical merit, and capability.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_BASIC#An_early_free_softwa...