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Apple literally offered the clang/LLVM copyright to the FSF to be released under the GPL. This was basically just ignored.

Furthermore there were real technical problems with gcc, certainly at the time. There were good reasons to start a new compiler project.

The license was always more of a detail, rather than the main thing.

I doubt licensing is a "detail" -- various comments say it matters a lot, e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/a/14488011/3831197

> The GPLv3 was the final straw that ended Apple's interest in contributing to GCC which is the reason Apple ended it at GCC 4.2.x.

I guess GPLv2 is still GPL, but here we end up talking about copyleft licenses (GPLv3) affecting business decisions anyway.