The primary goal of free software is software freedom and an open code base is only a means to achieve that. Open source movement in many ways was an attempt to deemphasize the freedom part. Any attempt today to reemphasize software freedom is silenced with accusations of purism, zealotry and cultism - that is evident even in this discussion. I have a strong feeling that this is a result of carefully crafted and deliberate narrative rather than of independent opinion.

Until about a decade ago, I used to believe that free vs proprietary model was just a developer preference. But last decade has consistently proven this to be completely wrong. I wouldn't mind per-deployment price for software as long as it treats me with respect and not as cattle to be milked. But time and again, we see proprietary software abuse the obscurity provided by binary-only-distribution to hide all sorts of anti-user code - anywhere from subtle nudging using confusing interfaces, to outright backdoors and malware. Yes, there are still proprietary software that operate ethically. But the threat is far too great that it emphasizes the need for completely open code bases.

That may vindicate open source software. In fact, I believed that open source and free software were practically identical due to the similarity in ways they operate and the licences they use. Here again, big tech has proven that it can push anti-user software as open source. Chrome is a great example - open, but still manages to send your every search letter-by-letter to the server. It also automatically logs you in at the first chance it gets. But chrome is far from being the only offender in this category. Almost all big OSS projects hide many such dark patterns.

Again, I often get shutdown when I mention this. The argument is that the code is open and so I should modify anything I don't like. Yet, it's a fact that such projects exist despite the thousands of developers who hate it. Here is the reason why being open is simply not enough. Software emphasizing freedom tend to be composable, simple and often easily modifiable (eg: emacs, suckless). Many OSS projects take away that freedom by making the codebase too bloated and complicated to be practically forked and maintained by even small to mid size teams. Development of many of them are dictated by one or two big companies that often unilaterally push designs that are hugely unpopular with the community. Another similar dark pattern is to hide bug reports and resolutions behind paywalls. The number of ways in which large OSS projects hurt user freedom is way too many - I will need an entire article to list just the ones I know. Essentially they achieve proprietary level of abuse in a free-looking package. It's difficult to use them in any way different from what its developer intended. People seem to miss the fact that such projects nudge you to part with your coins and that they exfiltrate enough data to implement an ad-hoc social credit system (eg: Don't be surprised if your health insurance premium is influenced by your search history).

> but they tend to switch to proprietary, partly-proprietary, corporate controlled open source, when there's convenience to be had.

This is an important point. Users - at least technically capable ones - must decide if the convenience they get is worth the risks they take with these software. In addition, it isn't as if free software can't be made convenient (the evolution of Blender is a good example). But it takes effort. And that isn't coming due to less money involved.

> Is free software a lost cause?
> Are we building a bad future for software by not fighting for something like the Free Software movement?

Free software is a philosophy more than a movement. I believe that there are enough people with awareness to keep it going. There are enough pieces present out there to implement any level of software freedom - from chip designs to whole application suites. The missing part is the awareness, ability and willingness to deploy them. There is great cost in terms of money (free systems are costlier because they don't sell your data), time and effort. But considering the dystopia we're already in, it may be well worth investing in them.