I am somewhat divided on the ‘extended’ GPL that these people developed. I mean, fair enough they have an objection to the military and/or its practices, but by limiting the military’s freedom, they are going against core open-source principles by limiting distribution.

I understand that the GPL on its own also has distribution limitations, but those limitations are only there to serve the purpose of open-source and to further the spread of the GPL, which IMO is not such a bad thing.

I suppose it is their work, and their choice. In this case it’s a rational choice based on their point of view. In just about every other case it’s someone making up a license because everyone else is doing it.

The BSD licence, as you said, has fewer restrictions than the GPL. As I understand it, the BSD licence is less restrictive than the GPL because BSD code can be incorporated into non-BSD programmes, or made proprietary altogether, and as long as the original author is credited, this is totally OK.

Of course, the GPL requires that all GPL’d code remains as such.

What I’m getting at is: if you support the BSD licence, you are supporting the most freedoms of any software licencing, and it would logically follow that seeing as you’re so carefree about your code, you would be so with others code too… hence, whether someone else licences under the GPL, BSD, or any other licence (even proprietary), you shouldn’t concern yourself with their choice, as they have the freedom to do with their code what they want.