From a developer/business point of view, there's no reason to use a more restrictive GPL dependency if it's not clearly "superior" to a permissively-licensed one.

The article makes a case that this will eventually push GPL out of the mainstream. No one will use GPL because they "have to" (which is the whole premise of copyleft!). It will only be used by enthusiasts

I'd say no, crushing / surpassing the competition is not a goal for non-commercial software and it doesn't have to be.

The thesis is that "GPL code becomes irrelevant", and they are probably right about GCC. It doesn't mean GCC goes away, just that it will become irrelevant to more people. Sun Studio and Borland C++ are even more irrelevant, not sure where that fits in the conversation. Is MS Visual Studio becoming irrelevant?

While it's not the explicit goal, it was because of technological superiority that most of us got into free software in the first place. There was a time where Linux worked great while Windows 98/XP struggled to maintain in its own feet without crashing down (yes, even XP)

While there's nothing wrong with purely enthusiast projects, they never got the amount of traction practical FOSS projects get. How many users does SerenityOS have, compared to Linux?

I invite people to ask themselves, do we really want a "pure hobbyist Linux OS"? How many modern feature are we willing to surrender for it?