To begin, my position on this matter has been clear for years: both free software (as defined by Stallman) and non-free software (as defined by Stallman) can co-exist. I believe in free market (not ideal free market).

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For the free software movement, however, nonfree software is a social problem, and the solution is to stop using it and move to free software.

We in the free software movement don't think of the open source camp as an enemy; the enemy is proprietary (nonfree) software. But we want people to know we stand for freedom, so we do not accept being mislabeled as open source supporters.

These two quotes strike me. Why should we label proprietary software as enemy?

If we clone all proprietary developers to work on free software alternatives, then we definitely have more options to choose from. The problem is not a social problem -- it isn't that people, average like my parents, don't know free software exists - but because there aren't enough to choose from. Like I said, if you can clone all of the developers to work on free alternatives every day, you will definitely have free alternatives. If you only have a handful of people working part-time as a hobby to contribute to free software, how can you compete with proprietary software?

I am not against free software. I like free software (as defined by R.S). I like open source. I also think proprietary softwares have value. Note here on HNs a lot of people run X-as-a-service. In the ideal world, if everyone knows how to program, if everyone has access to a computer, if everyone has time, we could have the old Internet back; imagine a world where everyone can write, distribute and host their free X-as-a-service for people to use? That's why knowledge base like Wikipedia is important to us. I like this ideal world, but at the moment this is not easy to achieve.

You don't need to teach me to use free software. If it is free and open source, and reliable, I will use it. But if the interface is ugly, unusable, crashes all the time, and if there is no reason for me to contribute back (say an IRC client), I will dump that software and look for something else. I am a programmer, but I am not going to contribute to every software I use. I don't have the time. I don't have the necessary skill. I have more important things to do like finishing my work, looking after my family, relax, cooking, working on my hobby project, and getting enough sleep.

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But software can be said to serve its users only if it respects their freedom. What if the software is designed to put chains on its users? Then powerfulness means the chains are more constricting, and reliability that they are harder to remove

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Sooner or later these users will be invited to switch back to proprietary software for some practical advantage.

This is a good time to re-mention MS Office vs LibreOffice/OpenOffice. I am fine with LibreOffice's Word processor and PowerPoint program until I need to do something complex. If I just need a quick PPT or a quick doc I can get away with LibreOffice. But when I need something complex, polished, I like to use MS Office. True I have been raised to use MS Office since I was a kid. It is true MS is locking me in all the time, but it is simply because the features in LibreOffice is still lagging behind. I will be happy to dump Office completely if LibreOffice continue to improve.

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Under pressure from the movie and record companies, software for individuals to use is increasingly designed specifically to restrict them. This malicious feature is known as Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) (see DefectiveByDesign.org) and is the antithesis in spirit of the freedom that free software aims to provide. And not just in spirit: since the goal of DRM is to trample your freedom, DRM developers try to make it hard, impossible, or even illegal for you to change the software that implements the DRM.

I don't want to start a flame war on DRM. This is as dirty as complex as politics. After reading the FAQ on http://www.defectivebydesign.org/faq#what I will point out a few striking remarks:

If you purchase electronic copies of games from Steam, you can't sell them or share them with a friend after you're done playing them.

I don't see this as a violation of my freedom. If the license given to me is restricted to my account, why is it okay for me to distribute it to my friends and everyone in my friends' circles? The other examples may be violation of freedom, I won't argue. What do you propose? Create a universal gaming platform where you can download games and all you need to access a game is to own an account. Say pay $29.99 and I can run a Steam game I didn't purchase but acquire from my friend? If Steam has a feature to transfer game (say only once) but locked to Steam platform, is that a violation of freedom?

Are Hollywood the one to blame? Not exclusively. This way, all their customers remain dependent on them, and helps maintain their dominant position in the market.

I think this is a direct attack on anyone who is trying to come up solutions. If you are a solution technology company, your job is to create a solution. Just as Google is an excellent search engine I feel attached to using it because it provides what I want 8/10 times. As a customer of Google's search engine, I am okay with Google keeping its dominant position by using the search engine. When Google SE fails to deliver the right results I might use Yahoo, Bing or even DDG.

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I feel like a lot of the free software advocates seem to be against the existence of proprietary software and any business depends on proprietary software development. As I have said before, I think both can co-exist. Do I want free software? Of course. I would like to own a free copy of Mac OSX and able to modify from start to finish. But I don't think everyone should be told to use free software.