It's free as in freedom/libre - liberty.

Someone with authoritarian viewpoint is of course going to chafe against principles of liberty, and that is how it should be. Same is true in software.

But it literally isn't that, as an author in depending on it you reduce your liberty. The software is free, those dependent on are not free.

You could argue well it's free to users, but there's a level of survivorship bias due to the fact this is confined to the software people will publish under this license.

Edit: Back to "free software losing" is unsurprising given the above. All the benefit to the user are ultimately irrelevant to the growth of software when doesn't come from users, it comes from people weighing up if they want to forgo this ability to exercise control over software they made. And the portion of users who actually care are negligible to the point it has zero incentive to the software provider. The one exception I would say is, the "Free" softwares model works well for public goods like shared infrastructure like database software and such, but for end user software it is insane licensing model.

> Someone with authoritarian viewpoint is of course going to chafe against principles of liberty, and that is how it should be

Do you even hear yourself. This is the rhetoric why no one takes this seriously. Your suggesting my desire not to be deprived of my own personal liberty and act on my own terms (without causing harm to anyone else) is somehow authoritarian? It's such a narcissistic / manipulative entitled framing, to suggest this embodies anything resembling liberty.