Given the condescending and crude tone of your comment it's no wonder such concepts are foreign to you.
If you're writing code and see the GPL as a roadblock, then you can use a different license.
If you want to use code that is under the license and see the license as a roadblock, no one is forcing you to use that code. It's either compelling enough code that you'll deal with the licensing, or it's not compelling enough and you'll have to roll your own. It's basically just a non-monetary price point then, isn't it?
Am I missing something or is there some kind of assumption that people are entitled to other peoples work if they GPL it?
(Not saying that you make the assumption personally, but that you might be assuming that is what is stopping others)
I'm all thinking aloud / genuinely interested in what the issues are here.
There is a continuum from having your code used in a completely non-commercial project to being used by Microsoft in some terrible software. The FSF seems to be still in a mindset where software was controlled by these large companies who are the enemy. I think we've moved on, and I would like the community to reflect that a bit better.
Also, I dont believe anyone today is silly to believe that Microsoft or "unknown large corporation" will really steal their ruby/python/java code. Most big companies choose their libraries and tools very carefully and are more concerned about lawsuits as opposed to spending some developer time to re-write some library.
Sure I've contributed a fair pile of open source software. But it's just code that I've put out on the internet, with no silly license attached. It's entirely possible that some of the places I've stuck that code have presented me a list of checkboxes to randomly select a license, so one of them probably got checked. I can't quite understand why anybody takes this stuff seriously enough to spend even 5 minutes comparing licenses.
What I don't like about the GPL is that it limits the choice of license for derived works ... where "derived" has a very broad meaning (if your software uses a GPL component, and that GPL component has no replacement, no matter how trivial it would be to implement one, than it's a derived work).
This is in contrast to .NET for example, which is proprietary and doesn't permit changes to the code base and it's not developed in the open ... but it doesn't restrict your choice of license.
Another bad example ... Qt's licensing may have been good for Trolltech, but because of that Gnome / GTK+ happened. As a result there are more third party applications (both proprietary and open-source) written on top of GTK+ / Gnome, although it is an inferior technological choice. Qt got LGPL'ed (finally) but I think it's too little, too late (regarding the Linux desktop).
The GPL (not talking about LGPL) is a good license if used for the right purpose. But it is promoted as being the backbone of software freedom, and looking unbiased at its current usage, that's just not true.
I'll admit that the GPL is, at its heart, a cynical license, and that's what makes it so useful... But christ, the GPL is also the centerpiece of a community based around a certain large amount of altruism, I'm unnerved to not see that mentioned, though given the fact that it's Zed writing I can hardly say I'm surprised.