merwanche...@gmail.com wrote:
To me it's only a tool, not associated with specific political movements. a tool that is truly made for the user's benefit, not a scam.
Then you probably don't understand how software works, what software is capable of doing, and what role software plays in society. Therefore software freedom is probably unfamiliar to you and you should spend some time understanding what software freedom means so you can appreciate why free software advocates object to proprietary software.
At least regarding software/hardware, (one of) the lowest common denominator we all agree on is the lack of transparency, associated with a list of privacy abuse by many tech companies.
Many software proprietors will tell you in their licensing terms that they intend to collect data about the user's computer, use of the program, and many other things (no matter how vaguely they word their terms). Computer users typically don't read these terms. So if users come to learn that the programs don't respect their privacy, or don't allow them to ever understand what the program does (should they want to know or hire someone to work on their behalf), users learn the hard way that they are not allowed to change that software.
Users should be taught to value their freedoms to run, inspect, share, and modify programs even though most users aren't programmers (just as most users of electricity aren't electricians, most users of plumbing aren't plumbers, and so on). Educating the users is what is called for as well as practical software that does what users need licensed to them under strongly copylefted free software licenses that are actively defended in court.
