"Developers may not actually prefer the GPL license, but there is so much GPL licensed code available for (re-)use that it often seems silly to reinvent the wheel. If you can use a GPL library to do much of the heavy lifting for your application, it’s often easier to go with the flow: use that library and license your whole work under the GPL."
My gut feeling is that most developers who release GPL source do so either because they're using other GPL source, or because they don't have a strong preference and are using GPL because they don't know any better.
I also think the over-generalization of "Open Source Developers" is harmful. There are different types of open source developers, and they have different habits. For example, GPL is relatively uncommon within the Cocoa development community.
"Developers may not actually prefer the GPL license, but there is so much GPL licensed code available for (re-)use that it often seems silly to reinvent the wheel. If you can use a GPL library to do much of the heavy lifting for your application, it’s often easier to go with the flow: use that library and license your whole work under the GPL."
My gut feeling is that most developers who release GPL source do so either because they're using other GPL source, or because they don't have a strong preference and are using GPL because they don't know any better.
I also think the over-generalization of "Open Source Developers" is harmful. There are different types of open source developers, and they have different habits. For example, GPL is relatively uncommon within the Cocoa development community.