The GPL goal is to avoid commercial interests to restrict the freedom of the code you released to be free. Without the GPL, IBM could have taken GNU/Linux, adde

The GPL goal is to avoid commercial interests to restrict the freedom of the code you released to be free. Without the GPL, IBM could have taken GNU/Linux, added a lot of proprietary code to it, and released a new OS in the late 90s to compete with windows, but without giving their users the freedoms they have assured with GPL code. If your code could be appropriated like that by other entities, fewer people would botter with coding open source without monetary compensation.