Software can (and should) be free

your distinction between the different definitions of free does not seem to make sense. Software is a product like beer which is sold for profit and not some abstract entity like speeh. It is not my definition actually, I quoted Richard Stallman there. I thought this definition of free, if not the quote itself would be well known. I apologize if it sounded confusing, but as someone state on the comments page, by free I basicly mean open-source. Software is much more than "a product like beer sold for profit", software can contain ideas and technologies that allow better products to be built. But even in physical objects, like in a bottle of beer or in a chair you have some fundamental freedoms. You can use the object as you like, make changes to it and share it with your friends. So why should software take those basic rights away? According to your argument, only because this results in a greater profit for the development companies and this creates motive to build new products. I will answer this shortly. How does free software = freedom for the person or company who spent money to develop that software? You don't have to spend money to develop software, but Iassume you also mean time and effort. Software is usually built onto other software. If that software is also free, it can help the developers save time. But generaly free software is more about the users' freedom and it should be that way! It is not a freedom of any product maker to prevent you from using their product as you like! How would you react if you were sued by a furniture company because you decided to let your friend use their product? Or because you tried making a table out of their bed? Or because you tried copying their chair? So why should microsoft prevent you from doing the same thing with their products? Take Microsoft for example. That company spends millions of dollars a year to develop the best software in the world. Why do they do this? Not so that the world will become a better place but because they make a sh! tload of money making it. Best software in the world? I can say the same thing about the linux community and they make free software. That's a matter of personal taste, but a reason microsoft's products are generaly bad (in my opinion) is because they are not open. Anyway, your only actual argument is that non-free software makes makes money, free software doesn't make any money and therefore the motive to creating non-free software is greater and this results in non-free software being better. It sounds logical, but there's a huge mistake: Free software developers DO make money from sponsors, from E-training, support, donations and many other things. Take a look at canonical. Its founder was the first african to visit the moon and he payed his trip from his own pocket. Canonical makes money and yet ubuntu (the most popular linux distro used by millions of people) is free. A community of people who are not necessarily qualified to make changes will not necessarily have the user's best interest at heart. Closed software programs are the ones that might harm your computer, not open source! And the open-source software always has some coding standards. Official submissions are always reviewed. To end my turn, I would like to remind you of great free software products, you most probably use at least one of them: > Mozilla Firefox, a browser used by millions. It makes 50-100 million dollars a year (according to . http://thenextweb.com...). Just take a look at bugzilla and the community there. > Google Chrome, another free browser made by google. > Ubuntu, a linux distro OS used by millions including me. > OpenOffice, a great alternative to MS office! > VLC, the best media player around. > GIMP , and alternative to photoshop. Also 7-zip, Thunderbird, Paint. NET and many, many more!