I’m not sure why this has anything to do with FOSS per se. Proprietary software can theoretically be used by people the intellectual property owners hate as well.

I’m guessing you’re thinking about it from a FOSS point of view because FOSS authors tend to be ideologically inclined toward making FOSS and perhaps think they’re selflessly making the world a better place whereas proprietary software is made exclusively for money. (Not that FOSS can’t be made for money.)

But, speaking for myself, a lot of bad actors just straight up blatantly violate FOSS licenses. I wish it wasn’t that way, but it is. (Maybe the court case SFC v. Visio will make a difference. We’ll have to see.) But it’s not going to do the world any good to deprive the world of your contributions because some assholes will disregard your license.

I suppose it could theoretically make a difference if you used a license that called certain companies out by name, but a) then again maybe it actually wouldn’t make a difference (they might just blatantly violate the license still) and b) you can’t really anticipate all the companies that are assholes at the time you write the license. If your FOSS software actually has a nontrivial user base, somebody somewhere who you don’t like is going to use your license some day and there really isn’t anything you can do about it.

But I still see releasing your code under FOSS licenses as a big fuck-you to asshole companies. It subverts the whole capitalist foundation on which they stand. It denies them the full ability to own it.

And copyleft licenses do that better than so-called “permissive” licenses.

Be gay, do crime, write FOSS, donate to the SFC.