Re: On telling others "proprietary software is bad for you", and the argument of reciprocity.

Bentham was deeply committed to social reform. J.S. Mill distinguished lower and higher pleasures similar to how Harold Bloom argued in How to Read and Why that there are more difficult pleasures than other ones of less utility. Globally, utilitarianism may be unfair to those who can not afford necessities, are uneducated, or are affected by culture in a maladaptive way; or, it may even be unfair to the environment and cause global heating because of the role of philosophy in government.

Stallman does not pick on utilitarianism this way, but he is an environmentalist who cares. If you read his political notes and study his website, you will find that he really wants people to not be 'planet roasters'.

While the patent system may be the mechanism holding back the economy, I have been told that the supply is lower than the demand. We could use renewable energy like geothermal energy and solar energy on a massive scale. Wind power is also good if we can put solar panels and wind turbines out on the ocean where the wind is intense. But non-renewable energy shouldn't be relied on at all.

>Both me and my friends often find it hard to device good arguments against nonfree stuff. Thank you for sharing this one, I think I'll be able to make some use of it
This demand pedagogical skills notably to explain the current state of copyright/patent and most people don't understand that stuff plus computers, and it won't go better as we're going towards idiocracy, anyway.

Describing the concepts of software freedom is as easy as describing freedom to drink water but it's as complicated to explain the ramifications of everyday usage of the freedom of drinking water.

The best almost universal understood argument you can make is to say that everyone should have the right to own what they have, because the GPLv3/AGPlv3 is basically that, a legal safeguard that gives you basic freedom/ownership of your computer.
Louis Rossmann has had a great success by sticking to that.
See https://tube.raccoon.quest/channel/UCl2mFZoRqjw_ELax4Yisf6w

Then you can detail the ramifications of software/hardware/computer freedom.
For example:
-a free market, being able to make a living from being able to proposes services to the population without corporate artificial restrictions.
-Ecological advantages, as hardware isn't artificially restrained by artificial software obsolescence and less restrained to hardware obsolescence since it can be repaired.
These are the big two that comes to my mind so far.

Non Free software/hardware does not allow basic life. Which turns out is pretty much the reason for the fall of civilisations if you ever study ancient culture and current NVC.

I know I'm sliding a bit off the thread but it's a bit relevant imo since it social issues/education.
About NVC:
https://tube.raccoon.quest/watch?v=McyZh8bsT7U
If you study the core concepts of NVC you'll see that you can take any social issue it all comes back to that, Marshall Rosenberg nailed the core of human issues and no matter the moment in time you can look in history he was right. Just like RMS is right with computer freedom.

Failed Ancient civilisation example shows again that passive is again the reason for their failure.
https://tube.raccoon.quest/watch?v=pMRW5vEPVgg

Ex soviet agent Yuri bezmenov and his work about subversion also confirms it:
https://tube.raccoon.quest/watch?v=5gnpCqsXE8g

Same for John Taylor Gatto in his work about education
https://archive.org/details/JohnTaylorGattoTheUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanEducationBook

Or even The power of the powerless by Václav Havel
https://tube.raccoon.quest/watch?v=3OkwWAPfIRU

It all comes back each time to passive violence.
And one could argue that Proprietary software is a form of passive violence itself since the only way we interact with software is with our minds.

For me it's less intellectual, more intuitive. Basically closer to the 'truth'. If you try free software, and go all the way, you know it's the right thing. Set aside all intellectual reasoning.

I think the biggest argument against Non-Free is the inability to build a true community around the software.

I've seen this twice, actually, within gaming. The problem with Non-Free, that kept repeating itself, is that the community wished to continue to develop the project far longer and in far more detailed and useful ways than the original developers ever intended. As a result, the original developers ended up abandoning their users on what was essentially a ship they were not allowed to pilot.

Two projects that come to mind for me are Mugen and Space Station 13. Mugen is a Non-Free engine that allowed for the development of 2D Fighting Games. 2D in the sense of 2D Sprites and 2D game play. An entire community was built over several decades building characters and stages to work with Mugen. Yet, the developers of Mugen refused to liberate their engine and also massively slowed their interest in developing the engine further themselves. This left all the members of this very creative community, and the content they created, stranded on a very outdated and feature incomplete engine.

Eventually, the only real solution was to create a new engine from scratch that would be compatible with the character and stage standards of Mugen. Which is exactly what they did when the community made Ikemen Go.

A similar thing happened with Space Station 13 that was long trapped on the Non-Free Beyond Engine. An ancient engine that was not seeing the required level of development to meet the wishes of users and content developers. Which is why the community has made the Robust Toolbox Engine to replace Beyond and Space Station 14 to run on Robust Toolbox to replace Space Station 13.

What people forget is that when you play Non-Free video games, become involved in making content for a Non-Free game engine; all of that can be snatched away from you in an instant the moment the developers decide they're tired of working on that project now. This is because with Non-Free there is no freedom to make and distribute modified copies. There is no Freedom to Fork. There is no way for the community to step up into roles and pick up development where the original developers left off. The entire community, and the content made, becomes marooned. Marooned on an ancient, feature incomplete, engine that the people who actually run and enjoy the software have no way of making any better.

They really only have three options once Marooned.

1: Beg / buy off the Non-Free developers to liberate the engine.

2: Accept their horrible situation and live with the engine as is. The ancient, feature incomplete, and likely to become more and more difficult to even run on modern Operating Systems / Hardware engine that they're stuck with now.

3: Rebuild the entire engine from scratch, better this time, and make it Free Software this time so that they don't have to deal with this same problem again in the future.

I think you can see how this argument goes beyond game engines to software in general. With Non-Free, you are truly at the whim of the developers / rights holders. If they pull out of the project, the entire community is just screwed. Because they have the Source Code under legal lock and key so nobody but them can continue to develop it.

The best way to achieve longevity in software and in the building of communities that use that software is to ensure that the software is licensed in such a way that the community can take over its development when the original developers eventually decide they're done. Non-Free doesn't allow for this.

Proprietary software is very often a planet roaster as well.

This can be true about "open source" as well and sadly, libre software too if it is created by people who make the source code unyieldingly big.

bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies however dwarf even the problems that the big tech giants create as far as climate damage.

I won't say that this isn't a problem, in fact sometimes I wonder if the universe has a dumbing effect the more the environment gets wrecked and it pushes on people in this world to be dumber over time.

I also think that all the 3 letter dialling, etc... between surveillance systems can't be good for the environment.

I am no longer concerned about climate destroying the planet or even people's existence as much as, people will going get stupider the more this stuff is pushed.

We don't need these megalomaniac narcissists who think everyone should eat their shit... its just not needed and no one should have to cater to them. It should actually be the opposite if they want to thrive.