That's not slavery at all. It sounds to me like dependence on a commune. The
problem with that comparison, though, is proprietary software creates
dependence; dependence on a commune for food is caused by nature, not people,
so a question of ethics isn't raised. The difficulties of escaping from
slavery are caused by laws and efforts against slaves by slave owners, not
simple nature.
It's true that the comparisons between slavery and proprietary software are
only valid within a limited scope. This is what I've said from the beginning
(riftyful asked if it's a "loose comparison", and I said yes). That limited
scope is the fact that both are exploitative by their very nature. It doesn't
matter if someone "agrees" to be exploited; they're still being exploited,
and that's unethical.
My point is, slavery is always exploitative and therefore never ethical. In
modern society (or at least most of it), it's illegal. Voluntary "slavery" is
D/s, and that is perfectly fine because it's not exploitative, for the
reasons I mentioned. Similarly, proprietary software is always exploitative
and therefore never ethical. It should probably eventually be illegal. But
choosing not to have the source code to libre programs you use* (you could
call it "voluntarily non-libre", in the sense that you the user are deciding
not to have control over your computing) is perfectly fine because it's not
exploitative, again for the reasons I mentioned.
* I was previously talking about choosing not to modify libre programs, but I
think choosing to make it so you don't have a copy of the source code at all
is a more appropriate comparison, since it simulates what proprietary
software is like better.
