I was thinking that exact thing lol. I’m like, yes ‘distributions’ are distributing new softwares with the new kernel.

And the improvement in desktop environments does feel like a good improvement considering the user is interacting most with it.

Or maybe I’m just apathetic to these things because most things I care about my distribution are that it provides me a good package manager for external and self made programs. And everything else is just programs installed through said package manager.

Publishing it under GPL does benefit the humanity because any improvement on it will be also available to everyone. Letting corps take your work and put a monetary/legal block for people to use freely doesn’t seem like benefiting humanity that much.