How does it do that?
Speaking from personal experience, there are multiple companies making tens of millions a year from selling products based on my GPL'd software. In every case, they have additional proprietary work in addition to the GPLd software that makes a "product", and not just a "tar.gz" download.
There are companies offering free downloads of GPLd versions of their software, and paid downloads of their proprietary software.
And nothing forces a company to use GPL software. If they don't like the GPL license on my software, they're free to write their own, or find a BSD licensed replacement.
A lot of the anti-GPL complaints I've seen amount to "I can see the software, but I can't use it under terms of my choosing, so I'm mad at the authors for choosing a 'bad' license." Which seems to be the case here.
