"No true free software advocate" would *ever* use proprietary software,
therefore, anyone who does *ever* use proprietary software is "no true free
software advocate".
You really want free software advocates to pass a "purity test"! I only wrote
that the free software movement considers that freedoms in our computing
lives is more important than the technical quality of the software. The open
source movement ranks those values in the opposite way.
The free software movement aims to have free software to do anything we want
with computers. We are not there yet and sacrifices (such as using a
technically worse program) are needed, otherwise the proprietary status quo
will prevail. And, like I already wrote, a transition phase is needed as
well: getting rid at once of all the proprietary software on all our machines
is a recipe for failure. Like most users I started using more and more free
software on a proprietary operating system (in my case, back in 2003 or so:
Firefox, OpenOffice now LibreOffice, VLC, Gaim now Pidgin, Emacs, etc.), then
switched to GNU/Linux but was still using proprietary software, then switched
to Trisquel (but was still using one piece proprietary firmware), etc.
The "purity" you are obsessed with is the goal: today, a free software
advocate rarely (never?) is "pure" but she aspires to this purity. Whenever
she uses proprietary software, she is not happy with it. She seeks solutions.
Hopefully, in the near future, it will be easier and easier to only use free
software.
A free software advocate will use proprietary software when other values she
ranks above software freedom requires her to use proprietary software. You
gave several examples: not buying new hardware (be it for economical or
ecological reasons), talking with beloved people who will not change their
computing habits, etc.
It turns out I bought a free-software-friendly Wifi adapter (because my
internal board requires proprietary firmware) and I do not use a phone nor a
proprietary VOIP software (I use Firefox Hello). Anyway, I am not "pure": my
BIOS is proprietary (importing one of the Libreboot laptops in Brazil would
cost a fortune), I sometimes use proprietary JavaScript (for instance to
access my bank account), etc. I am not happy with those compromises and seek
solutions (anyone knows a Brazilian bank whose website works with LibreJS?).
Who stands for "open source" would not care.
