Yeah, this is pretty much the rationale behind the Paradox of Tolerance, which you alluded to. Just as a tolerant society cannot tolerate intolerance without eventually just becoming intolerant, this clearly demonstrates that the same is true for Free Software. If we tolerate the use of Free Software for the use of the non-free software, eventually one loses the freedom in Free Software.

It's of course not a perfect analogy since the original Free Software still exists, but since in practice the dependency was from free towards non-free, like in this instance, it still works. Google and its anti-freedom practices are still in effective control of the Android ecosystem even though it's still technically free by way of AOSP.

And just as how some people argue that intolerance of the intolerant by a tolerant society is bad, so do some people argue that things like the GPL is bad because it prevents downstream modifications etc. going from free to non-free. Maybe this will help re-evaluate the culture around this stuff.

> Paradox of Tolerance, which you alluded to. Just as a tolerant society cannot tolerate intolerance without eventually just becoming intolerant

I’ve always thought this was hand wavy nonsense. Tolerance and tolerating is so ill defined in these discussions that they end up pointless.

I’m also not sure game theory supports that intolerance wins out if you view it as repeated instances of the prisoner’s dilemma.