I am not sure why you are trying to make fun of me:

Permissive licenses ensure that the first generation of users/developers benefit from the code in question being free, and then allow restrictions. Licenses along the lines of the GPL make sure software stays free even after generations of copies. The restriction in the GPL that sets it apart from, let's say, the BSD license, is that it doesn't allow further restrictions.

So the tree of descendants of an originally "permissively" licensed code contains potentially more restrictions, that the tree of descendants of originally GPL licensed code.

Quite possible that this makes the GPL the less successfull of the bunch.

That shares a similarity to the paradox of tolerance: To ensure a society stays tolerant, it has to be intolerant against it's intolerant subgroups. You can argue that a society should be so free that is does not do this, but that just diminishes tolerance in the long run, so of the two paradigms, paradoxically, the more tolerant society is the one with a specific intolerant rule against intolerant minorities.

This is, as you rightly noted, not how modern business models function.

> So the tree of descendants of an originally "permissively" licensed code contains potentially more restrictions, that the tree of descendants of originally GPL licensed code.

I think the number of users should count as well. A proprietary application distributed to millions results, in a way, in more "freedom" of use (albeit of a thinner scope) compared to a GPL'd application rarely used or distributed.

> This is, as you rightly noted, not how modern business models function.

Some do, some don't. See e.g. Carlo Daffara on open source business models.

I think you are understating how crucial a license like the GPL was in Linux getting to where we are today. It was essential.