Something Richard Stallman said (I might be paraphrasing a little, since this
is from memory):
"If you use software which doesn't have freedom 2 [the freedom to share exact
copies], you can be faced with a moral dilemma which can happen at any
moment. If your good friend says, 'That program is nice, can I have a copy?'
you have to choose between two evils: give your friend a copy and violate the
license of the program, or refuse your friend a copy and comply with the
license of the program. When faced with this situation, you ought to choose
the lesser evil, which is to give your friend a copy and violate the license
of the program.
"Why is that the lesser evil? Because if you can't avoid doing wrong to one
or the other, it's better to do wrong to someone who deserves it than to
someone who doesn't. We can assume that your good friend is a good member of
your community who normally deserves your cooperation. But the owner of the
software has deliberately attacked your freedom.
"Even so, this isn't good. It's never a good thing to make an agreement and
then break it; even when the agreement is inherently evil and keeping it is
worse than breaking it, still, breaking it doesn't rise to the level of good.
And if you give your friend the program, what will she have? She will have an
unauthorized copy of a free program, and that's a nasty thing, almost as
nasty as an authorized copy of the same program.
"So ideally, you should avoid falling into the dilemma. I know two ways.
First way, don't have any friends. That's the way the proprietary software
developers have in mind for you. The other way, my way, reject the software
that doesn't have freedom 2."
In short, he agrees with you: making an agreement and breaking it is not
good, but he also thinks keeping the inherently evil agreement "I won't share
with my neighbor" is worse than breaking it. I tend to agree.
