I think you're missing the point of GPL, especially in regard to other licenses that you're saying are more free. The freedom GPL preserves is that of the user

I think you're missing the point of GPL, especially in regard to other licenses that you're saying are more free. The freedom GPL preserves is that of the user. If you ship me GPL-based binaries, it's my right as a user to see what's actually running. I also get to redistribute that under the same license as was afforded to you, but principally, I always get to see what's running. Somebody can take MIT code, alter it, compile it down and ship that. That's great if you're a developer. Super easy. But as a user, why do you expect me to trust this stuff? Especially when there's a GPL version out there that does let me audit it.