C++ can be safer but that does not mean it is safe. The fact you have out of bounds accesses, even if it is rare, is not really acceptable in a language that would like to be considered “safe”.
Many companies do not want to take that risk and will ensure they comply by the license.
And anyway, what does it matter if someone steals your code? The point of the GPL is not to prevent people stealing your code but to hope that it at least provides some value to others through good faith forks respecting their freedoms.
No, it’s just about getting compensation back for your work. If Oracle benefits from RedHat’s initial work then it is only fair that RedHat benefits from any improvements that Oracle later makes.
Assuming that Audacity does not have a CLA the GPL license will prevent muse from forking Audacity into a closed source project and continuing their development there instead. Instead they are required to keep any modifications open source, allowing users to remove aspects like the telemetry.
They didn’t necessarily choose FreeBSD because of licensing. Perhaps if FreeBSD has more restrictive licensing they would have still chosen it and had to upstream changes.
If it is so small then just write your own alternative. Otherwise it sounds like the small library is actually quite valuable and perhaps such a license is justifiable.
Your comment gives the impression that GPL is a set of restrictions that developers are unfairly enforcing upon others. In fact it is the complete opposite: it is a set of permissions granted by the developer which otherwise would probably be forbidden by law.