If you do all the real work of implementing ARM ISA, you will have to pay royalties anyway (where those are legal though).

That's why it is critical to favor worldwide royalty free ISA like RISC-V. This is not a silver bullet but does a good enough job.

Not to favour but to have an alternative.

And the geopolitical issue of totalitarianism may bite one day by open source nuclear arm design.

It depends. May be paying ok. Not that apple cannot enjoy fruitful result even if somehow it must pay a bit on some core.

Everyone knows what GP is getting at, those opposing GP knows it leads to fragmentation and vendor lock-in, not standardization and open sourcing.

That was my assumption, indeed.