Stenzek changed the license because he had a meltdown last month when PCSX2 changed it's license from the LGPL to the GPL (which is allowed by the LGPL; there's nothing dubious about making this change)[1] for... some reason. In response, he threw a tantrum and closed all his open PCSX2 PRs, effectively quitting the project[2][3][4].
RetroArch is a plague on the emulation community, but that's not why Stenzek relicensed his emulator.
[0]: If this is actually incompatible will largely depend on your views how the GPL interacts with dynamic linking. Don't just repeat the FSF FAQ, look for other legal opinions not written by free software advocates.
[1]: https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/pull/11648
[2]: https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/pull/11315
Pretty sure it's because he would be "forced" to open-source Aethersx2 (which is an android port of pcsx2).
It would only prevent him from using code added after the switch to GPL, which is not a problem because AetherSX2 ended development long before PCSX2 switched to the GPL.
Which is a massive win when you want to run emulators on devices without mouse/keyboard, and more than makes up for minor performance issues or having out-of-date cores.
It's really sad that he still hasn't been pushed out yet.
And I guarantee you nobody on the libretro team is "profiting" off of other emulator projects unless you consider the RetroArch patreon donations to be part of that, but that money often goes back to developers funding bounties and other work/hardware for development... and it exists irrespective of any cores they might support.
The claim that they never update their forks is also demonstrably false. There are some cores that lack a maintainer, but it's not like they are actively being hostile in some way by not updating something. Also keep in mind that they host hundreds of different cores and all the builds for them across a dozen+ platforms, which is thousands of different build combinations, something I've never seen in ANY other single software project on earth (unless you count an operating system I guess). And some people only want to work on certain cores, or just RA.
I think attitudes like this is exactly why nothing ever changes in the emulation scene.
Without it, emulation on Steam Deck and Miyoo/Ambernic-style devices would be nowhere near as good an experience.
And if you're focused on emulating 8/16bit games, it runs the vast majority of them just fine. (If you want to emulate, say, Gamecube or beyond, that's when you're better off with individual standalone emulators)
https://libretro.com is ad-free
No hardware I tested has any problems with any emulator and most emulators still run better than the main port.
If you were referring to another retroarch site you went to the wrong site which could explain your problems, but please open a bug report if you really have such a bad experience with retroarch and maybe try another libretro frontend.
Sadly I consider your comment as FUD since I can't collaborate/verify any of your problems on any hardware... I'm sorry. If you really downloaded retroarch from a non official source, please check your PC for malware.
Edit just to clarify I'm not associated with retroarch even though I provided code a few times in the past. I'm still using it from time to time, but I hadn't had contact to anyone from this project for years. I'm just an independent dev who hates FUD...
It may be that I'm a picky bitch about these things, but retroarch has been an absolute mess lately. I can at least see where Stenzek is coming from. These people just do not care the way they ought to for such a problem. Retroarch is regression city.
Stenzek's skills as a software engineer are unparalleled and I have to imagine he knows what he's talking about.