Honest question: How does that help nowadays? Certainly in the early 90s, browsing the GNU ftp site was terrific for discovery, and in the 80s, GNU tapes were even more powerful, but nowadays, GNU seems to be irrelevant for discovery. I can't think of a single software project in the last 20 years that I've discovered through its GNU association. Similarly, GNU used to be important as an infrastructure provider for open source software, but nowadays is one hosting option among many, and not a particularly attractive one.
GNU has never helped much in developing software, the individual projects always stood and fell with their maintainers. So it seems to me that nowadays people put their projects under the GNU umbrella mainly because they buy into a particular worldview of how software should be licensed.
I'm not a participant in the GNU project, but, as I see it, the most important thing about GNU is that they actually have ethics and culture, and that's what keeps the project relevant for decades. They hold to their principles and are able to follow their own way without succumbing to pop culture of the modern IT.
So yes, being part of the GNU project is probably more of a cultural thing than an immediate practical advantage.
On the other hand, the GNU project tries to build a coherent operating system, which means that Guile, being part of GNU, is the preferred choice of the extension language for other GNU projects. This makes it very likely for Guile to stay relevant for a long time.
Honest question: How does that help nowadays? Certainly in the early 90s, browsing the GNU ftp site was terrific for discovery, and in the 80s, GNU tapes were even more powerful, but nowadays, GNU seems to be irrelevant for discovery. I can't think of a single software project in the last 20 years that I've discovered through its GNU association. Similarly, GNU used to be important as an infrastructure provider for open source software, but nowadays is one hosting option among many, and not a particularly attractive one.
GNU has never helped much in developing software, the individual projects always stood and fell with their maintainers. So it seems to me that nowadays people put their projects under the GNU umbrella mainly because they buy into a particular worldview of how software should be licensed.