It all depends on which false dichotomy you're looking at. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to see the choice as being between the code being tied up in a

It all depends on which false dichotomy you're looking at. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to see the choice as being between the code being tied up in a proprietary project and being readily available in a popular Free Software project. Given those choices, I'll readily chose the later option and avoid the MIT license. A different false dichotomy, though is whether you'd prefer to see your code buried in a proprietary project or to have every copy and back of your code burned before your very eyes. Is it worse for some mooch to make money off your hard work or for all your hard work to be wasted and no one benefits. The vast majority of the code I've written will never earn me a single penny. I've come to terms with that. There's a couple of pieces that my vanity has convinced me have potential and they're licensed under the GPL. The rest, though, is fully MIT licensed. If they wind up in a proprietary software project, that's wonderful, because it means that someone is actually using it. That's pretty much my best case scenario and far superior to the likely outcome where the project fades into obscurity and the code benefits no one.