UPDATE: I found this issue explaining the relicensing of rust game engine Bevy to MIT + Apache 2.0 dual. Tldr: A lot of rust projects are MIT/Apache 2.0 so using those licenses is good for interoperability and upstreaming. MIT is known and trusted and had great success in projects like Godot.
ORIGINAL POST:
RedoxOS, uutils, zoxide, eza, ripgrep, fd, iced, orbtk,...
It really stands out considering that in FOSS software the GPL or at least the LGPL for toolkits is the most popular license
Most of the programs I listed are replacements for stuff we have in the Linux ecosystem, which are all licensed under the (L)GPL:
uutils, zoxide, eza, ripgrep, fd -> GNU coreutils (GPL)
iced, orbtk -> GTK, QT (LGPL)
RedoxOS -> Linux kernel, most desktop environments like GNOME, KDE etc. all licensed GPL as much as possible
I have never heard anyone claim that GPL or LGPL are the most popular licenses for tools. From what I’ve seen it’s the opposite. MIT is by far the most popular by an insane margin. So much so that when I see an lgpl license I’m surprised.
Most of the rust projects I listed are replacements for stuff in the Linux ecosystem which are licensed (L)GPL. The most popular toolkits by far are GTK and QT, both LGPL
For GNU/Linux tools?
ok, that I can understand, if they're only considering "tools" to be those on lgpl systems themselves.
Firstly, GNU/Linux systems aren't just "lgpl" systems. Secondly, out of curiosity what were you considering "tools" to be?
Anything you use on your computer to help you complete a job. Docker, ripgrep, IntelliJ, graalvm, javac, cargo, Zulip, etc. Thinking that tools are just contained to be what comes bundled with your os is a weird take to me.
GPL was the most popular at one point. MIT overtook it around the turn of the century, I think.