Sell me on free software. Why should it be important for me to use it?

Free Software = (((Talmudic Bullshit)))
Proprietary Software = (((Corporate Jew)))
Use Open Source software instead

Protecting intellectual property is not restricting anyone since people who actually program are a small minority. 99.9 percent of the Free Software community is political activism

The distributors are restricting users with their full consent. The fact that the users consent doesn't change the fact that the users are restricted of their freedom. This is the political position of the distributors of proprietary software.

You're really grasping at straws here. Its only political to you because you're a freetard. Exactly what I originally said. If you politicize software, then go ahead and support free software. But you're being disingenuous to people who simply are apathetic

Free software is important because software is first and foremost a tool that is supposed to aid the user in achieving their goals (like a saw or a drill). It's not supposed to work the other way, i.e. you being the tool and the software controling you to achieve its authors' goals, which is enabled by proprietary software.
Given the above, it stands to reason the user should be able to do whatever the fuck they want with it without restrictions (again, just like with a saw or a drill), because the user being able to use/adapt the software to meet their needs is the number one concern.
I still can't believe how autistic Stallman is that he could never incorporate something resembling the above 2 paragraphs, which basically explain free software to the average joe, his numerous ramblings
Open source often makes omission of the above, given they sweep all the business-unfriendly aspects of free software under the rug to more easily pitch their software to corporations. Open source proposes that better software can be developed through open collaboration. Whether this openness is of benefit to users is merely coincidental. As such, Open Source doesn't focus on the user's ability to solve their problems.
Plenty of Open Source proponents couldn't care less about users being restricted by proprietary derivatives of their software, whereas free software proponents condemn the practice (because the user not having the ability to utilize/adapt the software to suit their needs is unacceptable).

Because the botnet mines your data. The data is usually provided involuntarity and you get no information on which data is collected and how, and what safety measures are in place to safeguard it. Not to mention that the collected data can be misleading or wrong, and you'll have little to no chance to correct it after collection. This data is used to build a profile on you. Said profile can (and most likely will) be sold for money, not to mention it can also get leaked. The data can be manipulated to negatively impact your employability, access to health care and credit, and your image and social standing, usually without your knowledge, so it'd be better if no one collected it in the first place.
There you have it, now fuck off back to half/g/

So you're saying that when users are forbidden to access the source code that the users are not restricted? If this is your argument, then you are an outright liar.

Stallman actually does say what you've said. You haven't heard him because you don't spend your time listening to his sermons.

gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.en.html

I agree with this post somewhat, but I would also add that there may be situations where you want your software to respect your freedom and privacy. It doesn't have to be political, you just have to want to not be tracked every time you search something on the internet, or to have control over a piece of software, and then you have a valid reason to care about free software.

The end user is not forbidden to do shit. They just don't care. What you describe is in fact the opposite. The company has no choice but to be political by releasing the source code to their software. It means they now need to set up the means of distributing it with some level of direct community interaction. By just making it proprietary they can say "fuck off" and not have to care. You're acting like a companies inaction makes them political. You're wrong. And a retard. This is what Steve Ballmer meant when he shouted "Developers developers developers developers!" He meant people with actual jobs. Not you he was also right to call the GPL cancer

This is a great summary. I would also like to add, it someone thinks
they are mistaken. Just because you cannot do something does not mean that no one can. You could ask a friend or pay someone to make changes to the software. You could learn how to do it. You might collaborate with someone who can and offer your own skills, be it writing, art or sound (in the case of a multimedia application). Even just submitting bug reports and testing new releases can be a tremendous help to programmers.

Think of it like a bike: even if you are not a bike mechanic yourself, you can still chose who will repair your bike, how to upgrade it, and so on. Some small maintenance you can do yourself or ask a friend or family member. This is all possible because you are Free in what you want to do with your bike.

Now imagine if we had proprietary bicycles: you would need permission from the manufacturer to ride it, you might have to pay extra to ride it in different terrain, there might be places you are not allowed to ride it to. Only the manufacturer would be allowed to repair or upgrade your bike. You could only use parts authorized by the manufacturer. The manufacturer might be recording when and where you ride it. In short: you would not own your bicycle, your bicycle would own you.

Imagine if we had proprietary hardware.

oh wait...

Read rms essays you ignoramus.

You shoudn't. It is our secret club and you can't join.

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It isn't, and it's becoming less and less so. I sure to love my gay-ass phone with it's locked-bootloader, and bloatware I can't get rid of. Whoa, how convenient! The free software movement was started in part due to a lack of convenience in fact.

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No, get fucked. Eat your proprietary shit like a good piggy.

A few months ago I had to set up two computers, one with Windows 10 and one with Ubuntu. The Windows 10 installation process was such a clusterfuck, I didn't think you could mess things up this badly even if you wanted to do it intentionally. The UI is flat cancer, the options tell you nothing and in order to get your (((free))) key you have to sign up for like five services, and these five services change like twice a year, so even if you figured it out the last time there is no guarantee that it's going to be the same this year. And don't even get me started on the different versions of Windows where you first have to figure out which one it is you actually want.

With Unbuntu if you change your mind and want different software or another window manager you can just install it from apt and get one with your work. The installation is as straight-forward and idiot-proof as it gets, no need to sign up for any shit. Pop that USB drive in, boot it up, double-click the installer and you are good to go.

If you become interested in free software, then you can make shitty politicized threads on Zig Forums about legal matters that have nothing to do with programming or technology per se.

If a user asks to have a copy of the source code, the owner of the proprietary software says, "no, you are forbidden to access the source code". Intentionally witholding source code is a political decision as much as intentionally granting access to the source code. Granting access to the source code should be trivial because users have to somehow get access to the software binary. There is absolutely zero requirement for community interaction when source code is distributed along with the binary. I don't know where you get the idea that a distributor requires extra direct community action beyond what's required for the distribution of a binary program.

Its not. You're grasping at straws. If someone wanted to see the source code of a program, he would have already jumped on the free software train. He's not going to ask Microsoft "yo give me the source to Windows!" unless he was mentally retarded. People use proprietary software because they're indifferent with regards to software politics. I guess Nintendo was sure as fuck making a political statement releasing Super Mario Bros without releasing source code to it as well. I'm done discussing with retards. You keep trying to move the goalposts anyways. Don't bother replying because I wont bother answering you.

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This, but unironically. Software politics is autism. Real people in the real world don't give a tenth of a fuck about this. They care if the software meets their needs, everything else is secondary.

People are indifferent to software freedom politics because they don't know any other way in the first place. In the second place, people are indifferent to software politics because they don't value their freedom to control their own computing. Ignorance doesn't change the fact that Nintendo have a business and political decision to withold the source code to Mario Bros. Political statement here says, "Nintendo is the master of Mario Bros, you are not allowed to change the software". These are the hard facts. The fact that people are ignorant and amoral to these facts does not change the fact of the matter: the owners of proprietary software encourage people to adopt their software which users are not allowed to control.

I'm not trying to force people into thinking that their freedom is important, that's their own decision to choose. What I'm saying is that it is outright false to say that proprietary software is not a political stance and that society's ignorance and amorality to freedom doesn't make it less of a political stance.

For some reason I can always tell when you're posting. Are you a Stallmanbot/philosophical zombie? Why do all your posts have the same effete, loathsome, cadence to them -- as if Stallman himself is trying to proselytize me?

I don't understand what you're asking or stating here; all I see in your message here is a bunch of buzzwords. If you're trying to say "you remind me of Stallman", I think that's great.

This. The easiest thing to do is just to tar up the source repository and include it somewhere along the binary you send out. That way you don't even have to host the code in a public repo. In the past the size of the source repo might have been an issue, but these days the source code will take up a fraction of what a single Chinese girl cartoon takes up.

Not true, in the past game developers have been known to release the source code at behest of the community.

This too. One hundred years ago a farmer might have said "what do I need to know how to read for, reading won't plough the fields". Lack of computer education is the illiteracy of the 21st century.

How is describing your writing style as "effete" a buzzword? Maybe it wasn't you; but there's someone here that only seems to post about "software freedoms" using Stallman approbated phrases like "software that controls the user" -- there's something very robotic about his posts; you'd expect to hear what he says from a cult member inside a rubber room. The problem with F/OSS is that everyone hopes, and in that hope deludes themselves to believe, that because the code COULD have been reviewed by millions of eyes, it magically somehow actually WAS reviewed by millions of eyes. In practice, this could be no further than the truth... in fact, a good half of all lines of code deployed currently have never been read - including by their very author.

It's not, you won't be reading all the code of non-trivial applications to verify they do what they say anyways, and you sure as hell won't be reverse-engineering their binaries.
However, when running business, you should exploit the hell out of it to avoid hiring workers. Don't bother contributing back or donating to people who slaved on it, freetards get very angry if you do.

Because as soon as money is involved, greed becomes involved, and someone on the other side is going to want more and more and more. Paid software, proprietary software, software that isn't free, will always degenerate into farming their users for money in some fashion. They'll do it with advertisements, they'll do it with micro-transactions, they'll spy on users and sell their data. This will ALWAYS happen, like dictatorships degenerating into collapsed nations. Even if you have that one awesome benevolent dictator, eventually he's going to die or leave and you'll get someone else at the helm and that someone else only cares about nigger cocks.

That's why you should use free, open-source software.

Never before has pic related been more relevant. You peoples sheer lack of self-awareness is actually kind of shocking

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Are you retarded?

Compare the two situations:

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Not an argument.