Yes, that’s a subtlety that my original comment didn’t address. However, even patents can’t be licensed in perpetuity, so they can’t possibly apply to all futu

Yes, that’s a subtlety that my original comment didn’t address. However, even patents can’t be licensed in perpetuity, so they can’t possibly apply to all future work. GPL on the other hand doesn’t have an expiry date. In addition, there’s no implicit patent, you have to apply in every jurisdiction where you want to protect your idea, and IIRC in most jurisdictions you either can’t retroactively apply for a patent after you’ve published the idea, or you only have a short period after publishing before the right is forfeited.