I recommend that you read up on Negative liberty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty). The freedom from interference by other people is an important freedom, and can only exist by limiting the actions of others.
To reference Erich Fromm, its not about "freedom to", but "freedom from". If you modify or distribute a work based on a copyleft work, you have "freedom from" being sued for patents, DRM, or proprietary copyright restrictions. If the work was based on a permissive licensed work, no such freedoms are given. You only have freedom to distribute the original work or modifications of it.
This is a great reply, but it gets very deep into parsing and subjective opinion without coming to any sort of concrete conclusions (that can be applied to licensing anyway).
Personally, I'm happy for others to use most of my code without contributing back. Does that therefore mean that you and I have different definitions of the word "freedom"?
If so, then why isn't that in the dictionary? Do we need separate dictionaries?
If you want to give people freedom to modify and distribute your code, then that is a freedom as per the same dictionary that I use. I have no problem with its definition.
Freedom to, and freedom from, both include the word freedom. They share philosophical ideas, most which originate from the ancient Rome. The question we are having is how to solve the paradoxes which said philosophy created.
I thus personally prefer to use the word liberty rather than freedom. Liberty is commonly understood to have a philosophical connotation, while freedom is more associated as mechanical concept. A slave can reach freedom by running away, but to gain liberty, they got to be given rights.
(Not to imply that BSD isn't granting some liberties. It is. The above is about the word freedom.)
No, it pretty much does: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/freedom
It's true that too much freedom can produce awful results but let's not redefine the word?