Non-copyleft licences are not a universal business need for commercial users. See Red Hat, Suse, and Canonical for examples. BSD licences are also GPL compatible, so for whoever feels the need to contribute open source BSD licensed code, there is also a one-way street for redistributing it under the GPL. I believe this is an advantage that GPL projects & their username can leverage.
>Why? What does a GPL license let you do that you can't do with a BSD license?
I believe that bad people should not have access to good software. Bad people are incentivized to do sneaky things, and therefore, they avoid GPL licensed software because it legally binds them to be open and honest about their code/intentions. Take what happened with MINIX and Intel ME for example. MINIX has a permissive license that Intel exploited in ways that I'd bet most people here agree are net a negative. If MINIX had been GPL licensed, then Intel would have just chosen an alternative for Management Engine, but at least the options available (i.e., attack surface) would have been reduced.
I even support the SSPL. I don't care if it doesn't meet the pure definition of "open source" because what matters more to me is that it prevents large companies from abusing those who do most of the work supporting FOSS.
I believe that a successful GPL-licenced BSD is possible, and I'd take delight in knowing that big tech companies would be disincentivized to used it for some surveillance capitalism product i.e. Google's plans for Fuchsia.
[0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/minix-intels-hidden-in-chip-op...