>(They always say things like "It may spy on me, but there are millions of
people out there, and what do they want with me?" and "I don't care to
program for the operating system, so why should I care if its FOSS?").
From onpon4's Proprietary Software Common Arguments:
"Why should I care? I can't/don't want to change the software anyway."
You may not want to change a particular program now, but you may want to
change it in the future, or you may want to pay a programmer to change it for
you in the future. As a human, you deserve that freedom, so it is unethical
for it to be deliberately taken away from you.
Think of it this way: if you own a car, you know that the car comes with
certain freedoms: the freedom to change it, the freedom to fix it, and the
freedom to pay someone else to do these things for you. Though not exactly
the same, free software is similar: it gives you the freedom to change the
program, the freedom to fix bugs in the program, and the freedom to pay
someone else to do these things for you. Most people who own cars do not have
the knowledge necessary to do make significant changes or effect significant
repairs, but it would still be rather unwelcome for the car to deliberately
prevent you from doing these things the way proprietary software does; it's
not the car company's right to control what goes on in your car. Similarly,
it it is not software companies' right to control what goes on in your
computer.
In addition, proprietary programs whose source code is secret often contains
malicious features: spyware, which reports aspects of what you do to someone
else without your consent; backdoors, which change your computer without your
consent; and DRM, Digital Restrictions Management, which is the function of
refusing to function. Your only defense against such malicious features is to
have the freedom to review the code which is being executed on your computer.
