This is a GNU-approved fork
> weakly motivated
Has lots of strong motivation, like a stricter stance on non-free software, the usage of a "real", more expressive language (Guile) instead of a niche, poorly undocumented DSL (Nix), use of GNU Shepherd instead of SystemD for the init system, among other
> niche NIH rehash
It shares most of the codebase with Nix, so to say it's NIH is missing the point. Nix improvements are shared with Guix, and Guix improvements are shared with Nix
> unless you're already victim to lisp-induced stockholm syndrome
Different lisp offer different syntaxes, features, and use-cases. That you cannot see it makes me think you didn't try too much, and are probably just trolling.
In Guix, the only code from Nix is the Nix daemon. There is not really much code going back and forth, mostly just bug fixes.