> GPL is cynical at best, hypocritical at worst

It's not different from soldiers taking weapons from the enemy they are fighting. A pretty common tactic.

Fighting fire with fire. Where's the hypocrisy?

The restrictions of the GPL only kick in when you distribute your binaries. You have the freedom to run and modify the source as you wish. The only rule is, "The source code travels with the binaries" - meaning /if/ you choose to distribute it, and you may choose who you distribute it to, that those who receive the binaries must also receive the source code and can take full advantage of the GPL just as you have.

It specifically doesn't require that for logistical reasons. See, eg, the "desert island test" from DFSG. If you aren't able to contact upstream to send them your changes, such a requirement would effective forbid you from making changes to the software.

MIT actually makes it harder for people to profit from their software than GPL, because the developer of GPL-licensed code has the exclusive right (by law, as author) to produce proprietary forks of that code; if the code's MIT'd, somebody else could fork, clone the proprietary features and add a few more (preferably going against the original program's general philosophy in doing so, to reduce the chances of those features being introduced into the original), aggressively market, and basically steal the whole project and its user base… then the developer's unemployed, the whole thing's proprietary and some unethical organisation is profiting off the work of another.

The “rolling release” model, where the latest version's proprietary but six months ago's version is libre, simply cannot be done with something like MIT unless you're willing to risk somebody else taking it all for themselves.