I think that different people want different things. It seems to me like these days the idea of software being a personal expression is in vogue more than not, but there are always going to be those who want that and those who don't.

That said, if software is a personal creative expression, one must be prepared for the possibility that some people aren't going to like what one has to say. Often when the politics angle comes up with Notepad++, people will say "it's his software project, he has the right to put in political messages if he wants" as if that somehow compels people to be ok with the political messages. The author certainly has the right to use Notepad++ as a platform for his political opinions, and I would never dream of saying otherwise. I don't want him to go to jail, or get fired by his employer, or anything like that. But I similarly have the right to decide that I don't want to see his political opinions and use another piece of software. You pick up both ends of the stick, as the old saying says.

Imagine the result if everybody took to this mindset. Look at everything that's on your desk right now, and what percent of it was made in e.g. China. Imagine if they decided to just start jamming political slogans onto everything. Or for something closer to home, surgeons and anesthesiologists are largely conservative. [1] Imagine if they started signaling their politics. Many people, ironically often those most predisposed to try to make their own political views highly visible, do a poor job of tolerating the views of others. This sort of behavior would just cause complete chaos and disorder and make everybody even more pissed off at each other than they already are.

And political signaling can also make you look bad even to the audience that might ideologically agree with you. For instance notepad++ takes a position on essentially every big controversial US geopolitical issue, but they are conspicuously silent on the Gaza issue. If they hadn't taken on any political positions, this isn't an issue. But when they take a position on every divisive issue, suddenly their not taking a position on one like this effectively is taking a position, but it's one that (for once) they don't want to say.

[1] - https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/870192?form=fpf

reading about political messaging in any software should make you AVOID it, not "wishing to have it"

the moment software stops being neutral, it becomes a target