> I can't remember the last time I encountered a library or program in my work that was even LGPL licensed, let alone GPLd
I don't know what line of work you're in but this seems quite unlikely. GTK and Qt are both LGPL (and GNOME and Plasma are GPL). WebKit's JavaScript engine is LGPL. MySQL is GPL. Blender is GPL. Arduino is AGPL. GCC is GPL. Bash is GPLv3. It's hard for me to believe you use the Linux kernel without touching any of these.
GPL is wildly popular. It's losing ground, yes, and you correctly identify a primary reason why: commercial software companies correctly see it as a threat, and are fighting it in earnest now. It is a threat. It was designed to be a threat. The purpose of the GPL is to create a self-reinforcing free ecosystem that outcompetes the balkanized proprietary hellscape that preceded the free software movement. At this, it succeeded beyond any reasonable imagining.
A lot of the revolutionary spirit has left the free software movement. We are currently in the "good times create weak men" stage of the cycle. People who grew up in the garden of Eden created by the free software movement, who take it for granted that the popular web browsers are open source and Microsoft releases cross-platform IDEs that run on Linux, don't appreciate that the current state of affairs was wrought over decades by the kind of people who spelled it Micro$oft and were willing to tolerate their computers only half working in order to avoid proprietary software of any kind, on principle.
But make no mistake, we are still at war. The big corpos know it, even if they've managed to fling enough bread and circuses to fool some into thinking we're all one big happy family now. Giving up on the GPL is how they win, and we lose.
I don't use GTK, Qt because macOS provides its own UI toolkit (+electron etc). I don't use MySQL, I use Postgres (not copyleft). I don't use Blender. I use the default compiler of the OS, so I don't use gcc. macOS switched to zsh (not copyleft) so I don't use bash either.
GPL isn't wildly popular by any possible definition of the term. It was more popular in the past which is why there's a base of software that still uses it, but find me new projects written in the past 10 years that are GPLd. Especially if you look at language ecosystems like JS, Python modules, whatever. Very little GPL there.
The purpose of the GPL is to create a self-reinforcing free ecosystem that outcompetes the balkanized proprietary hellscape that preceded the free software movement.
Well in that case no, it utterly failed. Most popular client operating systems today: Windows, macOS, iOS, Android. Only Android uses GPL components, only the kernel, and the hardware is typically proprietary with no portability anyway.
Most popular server operating systems: AWS, Azure, etc. They use the Linux kernel to provide your software with basic services like TCP/IP and timeslicing, but otherwise these are fully proprietary platforms with their own APIs, own filing systems, and which you can't even run locally at all regardless of how much you're willing to pay.
GPL's influence had its heyday and peaked a long time ago. It isn't a threat to anyone because it has been universally rejected by the current generation of developers. Hobbyist hackers use Apache/BSD licenses, just as corporate hackers do. Neither support the principles of copyleft, and even when code is released under those licenses Cathedral-developed operating systems with no development community to speak of dominate.
BTW, Microsoft release their IDE for Linux because it costs very little to do so and Linux is no threat to them anymore. The world moved on, Azure is the new Windows and people struggling with Wayland are fighting yesterday's war.
I don't feel the need to fight the "new and shiny" war, because yesteryear's problems are far from gone. Windows' dominance affects end users, people like me who had no hand in creating it and now have to deal with a near-monopoly. Companies tied to Azure are where they are due to their own business decisions, and I feel no need to bail them out. If my competitors waste money, let them, it makes me more likely to succeed. They could change everything if they cared anyway. Users, actual people screwed over by proprietary vendors, can't.
I don't know what line of work you're in but this seems quite unlikely. GTK and Qt are both LGPL (and GNOME and Plasma are GPL). WebKit's JavaScript engine is LGPL. MySQL is GPL. Blender is GPL. Arduino is AGPL. GCC is GPL. Bash is GPLv3. It's hard for me to believe you use the Linux kernel without touching any of these.
GPL is wildly popular. It's losing ground, yes, and you correctly identify a primary reason why: commercial software companies correctly see it as a threat, and are fighting it in earnest now. It is a threat. It was designed to be a threat. The purpose of the GPL is to create a self-reinforcing free ecosystem that outcompetes the balkanized proprietary hellscape that preceded the free software movement. At this, it succeeded beyond any reasonable imagining.
A lot of the revolutionary spirit has left the free software movement. We are currently in the "good times create weak men" stage of the cycle. People who grew up in the garden of Eden created by the free software movement, who take it for granted that the popular web browsers are open source and Microsoft releases cross-platform IDEs that run on Linux, don't appreciate that the current state of affairs was wrought over decades by the kind of people who spelled it Micro$oft and were willing to tolerate their computers only half working in order to avoid proprietary software of any kind, on principle.
But make no mistake, we are still at war. The big corpos know it, even if they've managed to fling enough bread and circuses to fool some into thinking we're all one big happy family now. Giving up on the GPL is how they win, and we lose.