What the GPL does is forbid anyone who is not the copyright holder from changing the license. If you make a derived work from something and wish to use the GPL as the means for allowing you to make that derived work, then you must use the GPL.
The "better terms" that more permissive licenses give you is the ability to change the license when you make a derived work. Of course someone can fork the original open source version, but this is only useful if that person: 1) knows about it 2) has access to it 3) can build and install it for their platform. In many cases, more permissive licenses are preferred because vendors know that they can provide digital locks on the platforms that stop people from deploying free (as in freedom) versions. They wish to get the benefit of open source development, but still lock their users out of certain functionality.
Permissive licenses are useful, but they are not automatically better for everyone in every circumstance. Certainly I have a lot of useless bricks that used to be useful consumer electronics because my vendor doesn't let me upgrade them. Strangely the best piece of consumer hardware I ever bought was a bicycle navigation unit from Sony. GPL from top to bottom and they even gave you instructions on how to rebuild it and deploy it.
Does it matter? It certainly does to me. YMMV.
I'm also of the view that a truly irrevocable copyright waiver/dedication isn't currently possible under US law. We're not alone:
http://www.rosenlaw.com/lj16.htm
But you should be aware that others take a different view, if you're not already:
https://cr.yp.to/publicdomain.html
The most interesting reading I've done is probably the old CC mailing list threads on CC0-1.0's backup license. If you set yourself the goal of writing international/portable language, things get really hairy.
What it does secure is you right to fork the last open source version. Then again, so does BSD, MIT and ASL - and under better terms for everyone else.