> Most users and contributors put the functionality above copyleft
Most users put functionality above the license, copyleft or not. Among two comparable projects one will always be more popular and I highly doubt the license is often a deciding factor for that.
> It implies that copyleft projects such as yours will be largely pushed out of the mainstream
Those CAD projects were never in the mainstream to begin with. And FreeCAD might have a niche target audience but for me it has no viable competitor. The situation got better in recent years but I don't see why I should make myself dependent on a subscription based commercial project that's incompatible with everything else including other products from the same company.
> Such permissive projects will always spead and develop faster, all other things being equal
Such as? Wouldn't one expect BSD systems to have overtaken Linux in the last three decades with that assumption?