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GPL software, and extensions to it, are free and will stay like that.

That can't be said about software under the above mentioned licenses.

I'm not sure how the GPL guarantees that it will stay like that anymore than those other licenses?

You can always relicense GPL content as long as everyone agrees. You can also change it to source on request versus always accessible.

key is "as long as everyone agrees"

If you wrote the code, you can refuse to relicense.

OP also said it was a sign of 'quality'. Not sure how GPL promises that over other OS licenses.

I'm the OP and I'm not a native speaker but to my knowledge "quality" denotes in English besides a few other things the meaning of "value" (in the sense of worthiness) or (related to that meaning) "excellence". Something being high-quality makes this thing valuable.

I didn't mean "code quality", or the like, as a license can not enforce that obviously.

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