Let's assume the worst. Some company wants to make a photoshop competitor. They don't want to invest too much money into a internally developed project that will very likely fail. They disregard the GPL and fork the GIMP codebase without releasing the source code. Now a few months later they release their software at a $60 pricetag.
Those bastards! They stole all of our hard work to make some money! Now there are two possible scenarios. It will fail because they can't compete with GIMP which can be obtained at a $0 pricetag and respects their freedom. The user can have their cake and eat it too!
That's a pretty tough nut to crack but what if people actually end up buying the software? The only explanation would be that the fork presents added value that is worth paying money for!
In both scenarios the end user cannot lose. They either get higher quality software that suits their needs or software for free that respects their freedom.
Those bastards! They stole all of our hard work to make some money! Now there are two possible scenarios. It will fail because they can't compete with GIMP which can be obtained at a $0 pricetag and respects their freedom. The user can have their cake and eat it too!
That's a pretty tough nut to crack but what if people actually end up buying the software? The only explanation would be that the fork presents added value that is worth paying money for!
In both scenarios the end user cannot lose. They either get higher quality software that suits their needs or software for free that respects their freedom.