Personally, I will not contribute to something that's GPLed unless it's really important project - the Linux kernel for example. I know a lot of other developers that think the same.
The GPL is a vehicle of the Free Software ideology. Not every open source contributor is fully committed to that ideology.
The general argument in favour of the GPL and similar restrictive licenses is that it's not possible to extend GPL code without distributing your extensions under the same license (where the exact definition of "distribution" and "extension" is the main difference between LGPL, GPL and AGPL). It's largely about "us" (the Open Source community) vs "them" (the corporations, who historically don't contribute to open source).
In practice there is a vast body of open source code licensed under permissive licenses like MIT, BSD or Apache already and companies are releasing their open source projects under these licenses all the time. Even without the GPL, open source is here to stay.
On the other hand many companies now dual-license their projects under the GPL and a commercial proprietary license, with the GPL version being often intended as a "demo" to advertise the often very expensive but non-viral proprietary license (see Sencha for a perfect example of this approach). The ability of other GPL projects to make use of these projects under the GPL license is more of a side-effect (and free advertising) than an altruistic intention.
I think this has to do with the general shift in how we think about copyright today. Restrictive ("Copyleft") open source licenses subvert copyright to create a shared commons (which everybody can use but nobody can own). Permissive open source licenses abandon most of the copyright by just limiting it to an attribution policy and some basic cover-your-ass legalese (thus creating something everybody can use and own).
In most cases, if I've written some open source code I would rather see someone exploit it for profit than see someone prevented from using it because they can't meet the license terms. I don't claim to speak for anyone else but that is the logic.
Yeah, I totally agree with you on that front. The GPL (especially version 3) really stifles the ability for others to use your code. I license everything BSD so that what I do can help others.
Plus the GPL is HUGE and I can't be bothered to read it all. I know, though, that I don't agree with the viral licensing shit that it does and have read those parts.
That sounds like a lot of work, and I'm sure a lot of folks have expressed or at least agree with the sentiment. But I'll consider writing about it in more detail.
