When and why did MIT become the default license for open source projects?

I was watching some Fireship videos yesterday and one popped up called The Dark Side of Open Source // What really happened to Faker.js? I am familiar with the story of Aaron Swartz, but I had not heard about faker.js. The author of this extremely popular library got so fed up with companies taking and giving nothing in return that he blanked out the repo and broke it for everyone.

I couldn’t help but notice faker.js was under the MIT license.

If you don’t want for profit companies to use your code and give nothing in return, which is the modus operandi of pretty much every company, don’t use the MIT license.

Copyleft licenses like the GPL exist for a reason. If you don’t want companies to exploit your work for profit, use them!