i have questions about copyleft

one of the frequent justifications for GPL-style licenses over MIT-style ones is that they prevent some type of, as far as I can tell, "enclosure"

GPL proponents describe a scenario in which a non-GPL-licensed project can be "taken" by a commercial organisation and made proprietary

I do not understand how this can happen, or how the GPL prevents it

@aeonofdiscord Well, they can't take the existing code and make it unavailable, but they can reap the benefits of the existing code, and then can add their own proprietary alterations. :/

@Angle I guess I'm not super clear on a) why this is a problem (and who it's a problem for), and b) how it practically differs from using entire GPL software products as part of a stack that includes proprietary software

like, why is the process boundary so important

@aeonofdiscord because then someone could take an open source project, make a new version thats closed source, and outcompete the open source version. Like, suppose someone made a closed source version of mastodon, cut out the federation, added new features, and then went on to become the next twitter, repeating all of twitters bad behaviour? :/