[dredmorbius]

gcc would be the principle counterargument. At a more fundamental level, the GNU project provided the philosophical foundations for the Linux kernel to develop. GNU is among the principle reasons (the AT&T lawsuit being another) that we're living in a Linux rather than BSD centric world. I suspect that the free software model of the GPL also mattered -- BSD/MIT licensing have their place, but they're not a match for the OS/kernel as a whole, at least not at this stage of the game (in an earlier period they did help establish UNIX as an industry standard, and spreading standards and reference implementations is a key element of these licenses, hence: X11, Apache, BIND).

As I find the GNU userland superior to other tools, I also find that it's worth consideration.

And in all cases, I find it's sufficient to acknowledge the FSF's contributions to the environment I use and prefer. It's GNU/Linux.