“Today, VLC media player is used regularly by hundreds of millions of users, and has been downloaded more than 3.5 billion times over the years.”
A Paris student network project went GPL in 2001 because a school director signed off on it. Twenty years later VLC plays the files every paid player chokes on. About 1000 volunteers built it, and it still has no ads and no account. Most software with 3.5 billion downloads is busy selling your data.