>Either way, you've given them nothing they didn't already have.

Of course you do, if you licence your code under GPL you ensure that all end users of programs using your code will be given the source code to those programs aswell.

>The network effects of GCC/GDB being 1) very expensive to reproduce, and 2) easier to contribute to then replace, and 3) GPL'd, held back the advancement...

More nonsense from you, nothing prevented anyone from forking GCC and 'advancing' it, in fact that's exactly what happened, and later that fork became the main project.

This is the exact opposite had GCC/GDB been proprietary, no one could fork it.

And GCC certainly hasn't prevented any proprietary competition either, instead it's existance has made sure that the proprietary competition have had to give better value to consumers as there has been a free alternative, which has certainly helped advance compiler development in general.

>If this essay was any more Marxist, it would be carrying a red flag and speaking Russian.
GPL is a software licence, not a political manifesto. Are you saying GPL became the most widely used licence in the world because all developers who chose to licence their original code as GPL did so because they were politically motivated? Hardly, I'd say the vast majority chose GPL because of it's tit for tat mechanism which ensured them access to modifications of their code.

The largest and most successful cooperatively developed software project in the world: Linux, had GPL chosen as it's licence by it's creator for exactly this purpose, not for political reasons.

And as it's a licence GPL has no impact at all unless a developer _chooses_ to licence their code as such and another developer _chooses_ to use it.

>Claiming that you're "granting freedoms", despite the fact that people already have them.

I've already said that I don't agree with the word 'freedoms', again it is 'rights' which is what they should have been called as it is rights which is passed along to the end user. And no, these rights are not something end users are entitled to with permissive licences, they don't have the right to get the source code with binaries which uses permissively licenced code. You can stop this bs now.

>Employing economic network effects by which the intention -- and end result, should the GPL succeed...

GPL is already a success, it's a viable licence choice, used in a ton of software.
Permissive licences are also successes, it doesn't matter if GPL is used more, permissive licences fill a need and are therefore widely used aswell.

Also these licence types (copyleft, permissive) are typically used for different type of software, copyleft is usually the choice for full solutions/applications, while permissive licences are typically used for component/framework code. As such reflecting how they satisfy different needs amongst developers.

And there will always be a place for proprietary software aswell as long as they produce value for users which makes it worth the 'cost' (typically monetary). And if you can't compete with something someone gives away for free, then you really should be doing something else.

The 'industry' doesn't owe your proprietary projects open source code or protection from competition of free alternatives.