quantumgravity said: > Once I　install microsoft office on my computer, that doesn't mean I will > get punished if I decide to get rid of it - I can just delete it.
But what if you need Microsoft Office, and LibreOffice can't suit your needs? This has been the case for people in the past, and not just for Microsoft Office.
As I mentioned, slaves could sometimes do things to set themselves free, ostensibly. They could sometimes ostensibly pay their owners with money they could ostensibly get by working extra-hard, or perhaps they technically had the ability to find an opportune moment and run off to the desert or wilderness, risking death by starvation or being eaten by a predator. None of this ever made slavery acceptable. It wouldn't have done so even if people had willingly chosen to be slaves, rather than forced into slavery due to things like economic circumstances and conquest.
I argue that the ability to choose not to use proprietary software is also, often, ostensible. Sometimes it's really a choice you can make, sometimes it isn't; I suppose the success rate is much greater than the success rate of slaves trying to get out of slavery, mostly because of the work of the free/libre software movement and the fact that it doesn't require breaking any laws. But I think focusing on this detail is pedantic, given the point of the analogy.
