alt Hacker NewsGPL should absolutely be the default choice for software. It is quite weird when people choose the MIT license and then complain when others use their open source software and turn it into a proprietary for profit software when the author explicitly allowed them to do this in the license. The MIT is really not long. People should read it before using it.
But you can also take a noncommercial GPL software, slightly modify and put your logo and name on it, do some marketing and get cash out of it without contributing anything significant. You just can't make it proprietary. But it's still an unfair situation.
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I agree but the reality is most authors want to use their OSS creations at work, which usually means they will make a compromise with capitalists who reject copyleft licenses.
Many human problems could be solved if humans were less willing to compromise with greedy people, but unfortunately authors are too nice in general to do that.
The people choosing the MIT/BSD license and the people complaining about for-profit use are not the people.
Why should the GPL be the default?
If you don't want your software used commercially, don't Open Source (or Free Software) it. Maybe a CC-NC license if you want to give it away for noncommercial use.
The rest of us will continue to use and make OSS and enjoy it without worrying about what others are doing with it.