Props to the OS Xfuse maintainer, he does deserve a fat payout so begrudging him. Still, it paints the clear picture of how BSD is an inferior license when it comes to freedom for users.
Maybe this comment is too slashdot 2006 era, but still, licenses matter.
You assume that the author would have continued working on it if the code was GPLed. If you look at the list of contributors, you'll notice there's only 4 people (besides him) who have contributed any code [1]. That means that had he not continued working on it, the project would have died long ago. GPL doesn't somehow make code write itself. Unless there are incentives for programmers, all projects can perish regardless of what license they use.
In this case, you could also argue that the sole reason why OSXFuse still exists and is being updated is because it's BSD and the author continued releasing it because it was a binary-only release.
Google then released their implementation under the BSD. It was forked and worked on, and eventually it now comes to the maintainer. Had GPL been used at any point the current maintainer would not own full copyright and thus not have legal grounds to distribute binaries without source.
Original authors can only unilaterally change licenses if they were the sole authors, or with agreement of all other authors. Or with copyright assignment contracts as you see in GNU projects.
My comment is also not about the maintainer. My comment is about how BSD as a license is often framed as an equivalent choice to GPL or other copyleft licenses.
Years ago this was a topic hackers cared a lot about. Not so much anymore I imagine, but there was indeed a time when hackers cared if their software was open source/copyleft or BSD. Most of the online chatter was hypothetical, today it is practical.
Are they really? But they're clearly not the same. Both are "open" licenses, but one is permissive, and the other is strong copyleft. The intentions behind them are quite different, and I don't see how anyone could read them and not understand this.
Still, I don't appreciate the aspersions I see being cast in this thread towards application of the BSD license. When I release OSS, I prefer to do so under MIT license - because I just want to put it out there for people to use, should it prove useful to them. I don't expect anything in return for it, nor do I wish to place restrictions on its use. Why should I be crucified for selecting a license that accurately reflects my intentions?