> It may be better for commercial users, because they don't have to give back their improvements, but it's worse for the project itself for the same reason.
OTOH, another perspective is that the GPL is worse for the projects because the restrictions it imposes may make people less likely to touch it at all, and those who don't touch it aren't going to give anything back whether they have to or not, and commercial users demonstrably do give back to projects that are under licenses that don't require them to do so -- and even pay people to work directly on the projects.
but having commercial users "altruistically" contribute back means having to trust in them. Had lightable not been GPL, commercial entities could easily have just taken it, make a nice derivative (e.g., make it into a game dev IDE), but never contribute that back at all. TLDR; they got a free lunch.
With GPL , said commercial entity either have to provide their derivative's source (thus contributing back via more features/code), or pay the owners of lighttable a fee for not revealing the sources. Neither way allows them to get a free lunch. This is a good thing imho.
OTOH, another perspective is that the GPL is worse for the projects because the restrictions it imposes may make people less likely to touch it at all, and those who don't touch it aren't going to give anything back whether they have to or not, and commercial users demonstrably do give back to projects that are under licenses that don't require them to do so -- and even pay people to work directly on the projects.