It's fine if big companies or whomever want to use open source software without contributing back to it. There's no such thing as a freeloader in this context, the code is freely given so that people can freely use it with no quid pro quo other than respecting the code's license and copyright. If there was an expectation that someone using open source code give back (whether anyone wants their contributions or not), then that wouldn't be open source any more. I mean, it's great when users do contribute back, but there's no expectation of that, hence no concept of freeloaders. Heck, maybe you have a company that makes billions of dollars off of open source and never contributes back a single thing, ever. That's fine, if it were any other way then it wouldn't be open source- it would be just some weird variant of proprietary software where you're expected to send patches instead of license fees. When someone works on open source software (whether it's GPL, or something more simple and permissive), they shouldn't be doing it with an expectation that anyone else owes them anything. They will be very disappointed very quickly.
The purpose of the GPL is not to have developers give back to their upstreams, it's to give users freedom. To swing the balance of power in the user's favor rather than the developer's. Either the user controls the software, or the software controls the user.
> it would be just some weird variant of proprietary software where you're expected to send patches instead of license fees.
Why is this weird? As the author of the software, surely I get to decide how I prefer to be compensated?
If I'd like patches and user freedom, then your only decision is whether the software is worth that for you. Not whether my license is "weird" or "not open source".
