I value free, open source software more than convenience. For this reason, I will not use OSX or any other non-free operating system no matter how convenient they may be to use. That convenience comes at a great cost that I am not willing to pay.
Do you only play free games, listen to free music and read free books? What about the electronics you use, the architecture of the buildings you live in and the car you drive?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-roberts/books-were-the-fi...
If you sell me something, you cannot tell me that I can't modify it for my own use, for example. You as the seller can't tell me that I'm not allowed to resell my textbooks, or to modify the frames on my eyeglasses, or to hire my friend to fix my vacuum cleaner.
Proprietary software licenses do do that - the main difference is that is a non-rivalrous good; I can redistribute software without losing access to it myself. Because of that, people think it's somehow 'wrong' to say that I should be allowed to purchase a program and then resell it to another person, but if you look at it the other way, that's no more 'wrong' than purchasing a physical good and then reselling it.
In the South, it used to be common to sell property on the condition that the purchaser never sell it to a black person (I think they still used the term Negro or 'colored' then). If I remember correctly, that was first deemed illegal in certain parts not because it's horribly racist, but because it violates the principles of first sale: you've sold me something, and now you can't tell me what I'm not allowed to do with it.
But outside of real estate, I can't think of any analogous practice outside the information market - you don't sell me a book on the condition that I not loan it to a friend, write notes in the margins, or even burn it.
I cannot OCR a paper book I own, make modifications to it and then publish it on the web. Nor can I photocopy that book and give it to friends.
There's also a marginal cost beyond the first unit, whereas for software, there is none.
> I cannot OCR a paper book I own, make modifications to it and then publish it on the web.
You'd be violating a copyright, which is a separate point of discussion, but I'm talking about the physical book itself. You've sold me a bunch of paper bound together, and I'm allowed to modify (or destroy) it, as well as resell it to someone else.
Same goes for architecture. When I buy a house, I can make modifications to it. But I don't think I have the right to hire construction companies to build new houses based on the design.
Electronics and car companies guard heavily the schematics and designs that makes it possible to repair their products much less reproduce them.
Edit - One more thing: Just the ability to modify something you own (like textbooks or sunglasses) does not make it free. For example, I've made many modifications to OS X through utilities and configuration. The fact that OS X doesn't come with source code is equivalent to Textbooks not coming with their LaTeX source.
I'm talking about the physical book, not the words contained within.
> When I buy a house, I can make modifications to it.
When I buy software, I should be able to make modifications to it.
> Microsoft probably wouldn't care if I somehow reverse engineered Windows and modified it for myself only.
That's explicitly prohibited by the license. Whether or not you think they'll enforce the license in your case has no bearing over the fact that it does violate it, and free software advocates argue that such licenses cannot be nonenforceable.
In any case, patents are a separate issue altogether. So is copyright, actually - free software licenses are a way of twisting current copyright law into doing the opposite of what it was meant to do: provide freedom.
By that yardstick, most textbooks and eyeglasses are not free. I can't improve a textbook and put it online. I can't put my improved sunglasses on the market (even if it was non-profit).
So why are people revolted by a copywrited and patented (hence unfree) OS, but have no qualms using other non-free products?
Personally, I think free and proprietary products can co-exist. Both models produce innovations which ultimately benefit society.
Yes you can - the product in that case is physical, not digital. You can certainly turn the pages of a book into an origami creation and sell that on a secondary market if that's what you want to do. You can sell modified copies of physical products to your heart's content.
Yes, but only in a very limited way. You've only mentioned examples where I can modify the original physical atoms.
I cannot modify and re-distribute the ideas present in textbooks. It is those ideas that have the most value, not the paper it's printed on.
For instance, I can buy a hammer because it will make it much easier to drive nails than without one, but the handle is too long. So I can saw the end off to suit my purposes. You can't with proprietary software.
Also, don't make the mistake that free == libre. It's the fact that you're paying for proprietary software, not that your paying for it.
One example of this beneficial effect is the appearance of the netbook. Only after netbooks running Linux gained significant market share did Microsoft consent to license Windows to netbook makers at a price that made any sort of sense given the low retail price of the netbook. If Linux has not been an option for the early netbook makers, it is likely that hardware makers would never have been able to persuade Microsoft or Apple to consent to allow the product category to be created in the first place.
An argument can also be made that without at least a small fraction of computer users running Linux on their desktops, Linux would not have been able to capture the hearts and minds of corporate decision-makers with the result that Linux use on corporate servers might not have exploded the way it did in the late 1990s and first years of the 2000s. Certainly, Linux activists claiming to understand the thinking processes of corporate execs were saying at the time (late 1990s) that Linux needs desktop users in order to be taken seriously by mostly-Windows-desktop-using corporate execs and IT managers.
I will concede that at least some people (particularly, perfectionistic people like me or people who are easily annoyed) by will waste less time learning how to admin their machine if they run OS X than if they run Linux. And I will concede that the time and effort of these people would probably result in more social good if it were spent earning money and donating that money to a philanthropy than if it were spend learning how to adminning a Linux box. But that does not detract from the fact that if all you know about a person is that they run Linux, they're doing more "expected good" (a statistical term) for the world than someone who all you know about them is that they are a computer user or an OS X user.
You're confusing the tradeoff. The tradeoff is not about money; libre software can be sold as well.
The point in question is whether you should have to (or even be able to) sacrifice your intrinsic rights, such as your right to modify your own property for your own purposes.
Whether or not you paid money for it is irrelevant to that aforementioned right.
What makes you believe any of these things are intrinsic? Is that a faith based belief?
I'm more worried about switching to the "GNU Approved" OSes, like Trisquel or Parabola. They have a modified "Linux-libre" kernel with non-free modules removed, and they usually block non-free software by default in the package manager.
I want to do it, because it does make me feel better to use all free software, but I don't want a crippled user experience. I'll put up with a little extra work to get things like Gnash working instead of Flash, but if certain drivers just aren't there, I'm not comfortable just giving up core functionality. Not yet, at least.
I don't know anything about the "pure" OSS OSes.