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> Thing is, GPL requires you to explicitly allow that behavior, so HBC can't use GPL software.

Couldn't, not at the time. HBC has been open-sourced some time ago, sans DRM, as the Wii has long lost commercial relevance beyond enthusiast communities. This open-source re-release is what the repository is.

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Also worth noting: the version of GPL used by RTEMS seems to be one with a compiler exception, so it probably wouldn't have been an issue for HBC.

Yes[0], and if Team Twiizers had consciously decided to use RTEMS code in that way, they probably would have been fine. However, libogc still cannot legally strip out the GPL copyright notices and distribute RTEMS code in that way.

That being said, RTEMS itself is trying to relicense to BSD 2-Clause, which would obviate the concerns over copyleft, but NOT the thing that libogc did. In fact, the 2 clauses left in the BSD 2-Clause license are the ones that require you to retain the copyright notices. So libogc is still in the wrong.

[0] https://gitlab.rtems.org/rtems/rtos/rtems/-/blob/main/LICENS...

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