You're viewing a single thread.
The alternatives to the GNU tools are largely permissively licensed, yeah? What could possibly go wrong with that..
...People who wanted to donate their software to the public with no strings attached could see an uptick in the number of users?
People making those comments don't realize that much of the desktop Linux stack is MIT/BSD licensed anyway. It's also not like those "permissive licenses bad" people would delete all such licensed software from their system because the result would be unusable.
The number of users being those who would rather leverage the software for free, and then resell a walled garden version with proprietary extensions.
If the proprietary extensions don't add significant value, nobody would buy it in the first place.
That's the beautiful thing about gifting software with permissive licenses (when one wants to): it's a gift and anyone can do whatever they want with it for free.
ETA: I DO think that it is important for one who chooses to license software permissively to be informed about their decision and its implications. But, just like consent in other areas, as long as one enters into it intentionally and with the understanding of what the license means, it's noone's place to judge (and, like consent in other interpersonal areas, the license can be revoked/modified at any time - with a new version). Honestly, really weird of those that take issue with individuals choosing to gift their software to humanity - there's way more interesting and useful things to engage in in the FLOSS landscape.
LLVM and Clang make massive strides over GCC thanks to its license. If it weren't for many of the infamous "GNU'isms", GCC would have dies years ago.