> The totalitarian government wouldn’t care about your license anyway.
I see this a lot and while being technically correct, I think it ignores the costs for them.
In practice such a government doesn't need to have laws and courts either but usually does because the appearance of justice.
Breaking international laws such as copyright also has costs for them. Nobody will probably care about one small project but large scale violations could (or at least should) lead to sanctions.
Similarly, if they want to offer their product in other countries, now they run the risk of having to pay fines.
Finally, see my sibling comment but a lot of people act like Open Source is an absolute good just because it's Open Source. By being explicit about our views about right and wrong, we draw attention to this delusion.
It’s fine to use whatever license you think is right. That includes the choice of using a permissive license. Restrictions are generally an impediment for adoption, due to their legal risk, even for morally immaculate users. I think that not placing usage restrictions on open source is just as natural as not placing usage restrictions on published research papers.
Tragedy of the commons. If all software had (compatible) clauses about permitted usage, then the choice would be to rewrite it inhouse or accept the restrictions. When there are alternatives (copyleft or permissive) which are not significantly worse, those will get used instead, even if taken in isolation, the restricted software was a bigger social good.