I don't have particularly strong preference for copyleft (I use the Apache license for my personal projects), but these don't seem like particularly compelling arguments.

> So if I use vim or emacs for free, or VS Code for that matter

Vim and emacs both use licenses that require you to share any source code modifications if you distribute binaries that you change, so that's kind of a strange comparison. You literally couldn't do the things that Warp did with Alacritty. As for VS Code, it seems pretty disingenuous to compare a single solo developer to a multi-trillion dollar company.

> I have to hunt down the maintainers and pay them?

I don't understand why you think it would be hard to "hunt down" someone when an email is literally in every commit in the git history of open source software.

> Do I need to empty my wallet for every project I use for free? Because that's not sustainable for normal people

Most "normal people" do not have access to $50 million of VC money

> let alone businesses

Paying the developer of the one piece of software that they forked for the entire basis of their business $100,000 of the VC money would not meaningfully have hurt their ability to succeed. They could have just as easily reached the same level of success they have now with $49.9 million.

> I don't understand why you think it would be hard to "hunt down" someone when an email is literally in every commit in the git history of open source software.

I use Arch Linux, tell me which of the thousands of packages am I obligated to donate to? Im not exactly a money fountain to be giving money away to strangers I am grateful for, but it I put something on the internet as open source, for free, I dont cry if nobody reaches out to give me money. Honestly, I rather just be informed that my project is being used to make someone a profitable business, thats good enough for me personally. If I thought different, I wouldnt open source said projects.