On Tue, 2006-06-27 at 17:51 +0200, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
It is called a `needed evil'. When RMS wrote emacs and GCC, NO free software operating system existed. It was impossible to _not_ use non-free software. Today it is possible to use 100% software. So there is no reason to use non-free software at all.
Yet, there still exists proprietary software for which there are no free software equivalents, otherwise Debian non-free would not exist. This software may not be necessary to you, but it may be a necessary evil for others.
To use the prison metaphor, we have not yet fully escaped from the prison. Does this mean we can still use the prison's facilities to further escape?