GPL doesn't "taint" codebases. It is deliberately applied to code by the people who write it, knowing what it is. It's not an inferior version of a BSD license.

GPL doesn't "taint" codebases. It is deliberately applied to code by the people who write it, knowing what it is. It's not an inferior version of a BSD license. It's a different license. If you don't want your hard work to be swallowed up into some company which profits from it, doesn't make its changes available and ultimately develops a competitor that the original cannot legally use improvements from, a BSD license won't help you with that. If you don't care, then there are any number of choices. Other licenses you mention are also complex and haven't been tested. Licenses in general, not just GPL, are harder than people think. When it comes to lawyers, you get what you pay for. It's revealing at the end that you say "no one wants their hard work to become a derivative of a smaller project they pull in." The size of the project doesn't give it special entitlements. Why are you pulling in someone else's code if you don't intend to respect the license set by the person who wrote that code? That sense of entitlement to exploit other people's work without reciprocation (because you're bigger?) is the problem creators use the GPL to address. If you want to build a community that isn't based on the crumbs that some company (like Nintendo) allows to fall, and you don't want that to be subverted by free riders who use your code to compete with you without letting you use theirs, GPL is a better choice. But if and only if it is your code, it is your choice what license you use. Note that in the real world, people are constantly attacking GPL and harassing people who apply GPL to their own work, but the other way is not happening. We should respect the licenses applied by creators to what they create.