If they truly intended it to be a neutral question, then they used a particularly bad choice of phrasing.

Most people understand the CIA is a tool of imperialist violence/authority, but framing that as “how does it feel to x” is clearly a condemnation of the association being pointed out, which in this case would only matter if that association itself in some way taints the topic it was brought up in response to… I.e. the definition of feminism by Steinem.

Except GPL doesn’t say, “keep it free”, it says “keep it GPL”. Public domain is also free, but GPL’d code cannot be made that, except by the original “licenser”.

And while I can’t speak for other countries, the USA’s copyright regime, which is what would be relied upon to actually enforce the GPL in the US, is entirely built to serve business interests, which makes the GPL’s actual utility in enforcing “freeness” of software dubious at best.

GPL doesn’t give the original owner any power over others it just requires the code which was born free to stay free.

In the US at least, this is untrue; the only entity with legal standing to enforce (via lawsuit) the GPL on a piece of software is the creator(s). Obviously as GPL ‘flows’ through redistribution, that becomes more nuanced, but it’s always limited in standing of who “owns” the improperly-redistributed version. That is absolutely power that is unique to the ‘owner’ of the software.

Sure, because they cared about controlling the direction of the political movement, same way they influenced the Civil Rights movement. But once again, unless they are implying that the definition of feminism as offered by Steinem, quoted above, is part of a CIA influence op, or tainted by their influence, then what’s the point of bringing that up?

GPL is bad because it perpetuates the concept of durable intellectual property ownership/ licensing over supposedly “Free” (as in libre) code. Durable licenses are all bad. Unlicense is the only true FOSS license in common use, with an ‘F’.

“Free, but you must do these things” is not actually Free.

Notable and very honorable examples of projects that use Unlicense are youtube-dl and yt-dlp (and obviously, those are not programs intended to benefit corporations).

Now you have heard an argument against GPL that is not about corporations.

Are you implying that feminism is a CIA initiative?

Absolutely.

If you’re a guy, you’ve heard guys talk about women when none are around. Maybe it’s coworkers, maybe it’s family, but the culture of misogyny is not some on-the-wane thing, it is alive and well.

Bruh, you done been black pilled.

No state does. States are just political constructs.

As an American, I hope they do. Right now foreign arms sales subsidizes and keeps viable a lot of our defense industry. Here’s hoping a lot of them will collapse, and we can stop being the world’s arms dealer.