[tshirttime]

That they aren't implies that the intent is different.

News flash buddy. OSS devs, college and graduate students mostly, are clueless about the distinction and select whatever license tickles their fancy from GitHub's dropdown menu. They see a lot of MIT licenses floating around, recognize "MIT" as a good university, and figure they can't go wrong with it. They, like most normies, don't see how "freedom" figures into software at all. All they care about is getting a little shine before they join a FAANG after graduation.

As for why someone who does understand the distinction would choose MIT over GPL, ask Linus about why he'd "never want anything to do with the FSF" after being told to switch to GPLv3. Yes, MIT versus GPL is not the same as GPLv2 versus GPLv3 but the general concepts are the same.

[roenxi]

If you want to argue that licenses are picked randomly then OK. But in that case, people should pick the GPL; it is a better license for preserving the freedom of software users than the MIT license.

> ... ask Linus about...

Linus uses GPLv2. I personally see merit in the argument that v2 is better than v3. Neither is MIT.

If you want to use the GPL license and not associate with the FSF then cool. If Linus wants to do that, also cool. The issue is the license, not if you want to work with the FSF. The GPL also grants users freedom from the FSF.