I generally find that the GPL hatred comes a lot from academic circles. Lots of university-produced software prefers BSD or MIT, and looks down on GPL/LGPL.
I guess when you're paid from other people's taxes, you don't care as much about perceived "fairness", or that businesses don't take advantage of your work. It may even be the right thing to do.
In fact, companies using your "free", no-strings-attached SW may be a bonus in that situation. It looks good on academic grant applications.
Of course, the word "free" here means "paid for by other people", as it often does.
I’m not an academic. I do not use the GNU GPL for my code (unless required to by other licences because I am deriving my work from someone else) and I do what I can to discourage people from choosing it “by default”. My dislike for the GNU GPL comes mostly from the dishonest marketing (“free”, “freedom”) and dissembling about the licence (it is “viral” and that’s a feature). I also do not particularly care to replicate the FSF’s peculiar political rant when I distribute software.
However, if you want to enforce “share-alike” semantics for what you write, and you want the widest composability of your software with other “share-alike” software, by all means choose the GNU GPL (prefer locked to v2 unless you really care about “TiVo”-isation, then lock to v3—never choose the “at your discretion, a later version” clause). If you want to discourage SaaS companies from forming around your software, choose the GNU AGPL. If you want to enforce limited “share-alike” semantics at the link boundary, choose the GNU LGPL•.
• Warning to people using GNU LGPL software, though: it doesn’t mean what you think it means. You still have to provide recipients of your combined software the means to relink your software with modified versions of the GNU LGPL libraries.
If, however, you write software to scratch your own itch and don’t care what people do with it after you’ve written it? Pick a different licence: MIT, BSD, Apache, Artistic, whatever. You can even pick the GNU GPL family of licences if you really want that, but at least know why you’re picking it.
I have not seen "GPL hatred" from academic circles; in my time in academia, I did not hear anyone disparage the GPL. In fact, I don't think most academics had a deep understanding of the difference between open source licenses. That luxury is possible when you're not running a business.
I do, however, associate GPL resistance (not "hatred") from for-profit businesses.
Confusion about "why on earth would somebody NOT want to give away their software for free, for any use whatsoever?" is better. (Hey, it works for them!)
I guess when you're paid from other people's taxes, you don't care as much about perceived "fairness", or that businesses don't take advantage of your work. It may even be the right thing to do.
In fact, companies using your "free", no-strings-attached SW may be a bonus in that situation. It looks good on academic grant applications.
Of course, the word "free" here means "paid for by other people", as it often does.