Comment by Koshkin

Everybody enjoys free (as in "freedom") software. Turns out, even quality-wise free software is often much better than non-free, closed-source software. On the other hand, it may be hard to really understand the rationale behind it. The idea goes against the principles of capitalism (based on property rights). Also, if it is completely OK for hardware design to be proprietary, why should it not be OK for software? What is so special about it? The arguments put forward by proponents of free software do not seem very convincing, and sometimes their personalities do not help attracting people to their cause. Often, this ideal becomes a nuisance even in the world of open source. If you want to use Debian, for instance, you are pretty much forced to use "non-free" repositories (or a "non-free" Debian re-distribution) for your setup to be useful.