On 19-Jul-2005, Markus wrote:
yes your are right. I think that its never good to lose freedom, too.
Does this mean you think it is always bad to lose freedom?
But my question is more if non-free software is always bad or are there situations were you could say "It's bad that i don't have all the freedoms, but i just need the tool do get a job done and if it does the job it's ok"
I don't see why you're setting those two up as either-or. The way you've framed them, they don't contradict each other.
* non-free software is always bad * non-free software is always bad, but I want to use this program
Those two aren't contradictory. "Bad" doesn't mean "Never allow anyone to use this". It is bad to attempt to enforce a usage restriction on someone because of the copyright license, whether the motive is good or not.
Just because the *act* of restricting software is bad, doesn't mean people should be *restrained* from using that software. That's not what free software advocates.
Rather, we should be *encouraging* free software actively, and *discouraging* people from using or accepting non-free software, based on the relative arguments for and against.
The reason we keep banging on about it is that there is a lot of disinformation about software freedom out there. That doesn't mean we want users of non-free software to be locked up; we want to help them choose freedom.
One major part of that is to make them aware that they are currently not free, and then to encourage them to demand a free alternative.