Are most of you free software extremists?

Gardens and fruit are not an appropriate analogy for software. You can't copy a fruit or a plant, and you can't easily change them.

Personally, I think all culture should be free and copyright should be gradually weakened and ultimately abolished. But the software involved in culture, such as a game engine, doesn't even need to be nonfree for the related culture to be nonfree. You can have a nonfree game powered entirely by free software; Gish is an example. All that is lost by this arrangement is Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), which is a malicious feature.

"The only reason that anyone can make a spade is because spades date back to a time before patents were thought up."

Patents don't last forever, at least not in the US. They last about 17 years.

Yes, as I said, more than once, parallels between software and the real world don't stand up. But they are sort of useful for indicative purposes.

It's only really over the last few days that it's occurred to me the extent to which most distros are rushing headlong down the road to "here's your free Linux, by the way, we've added all the closed source, proprietary stuff to it without asking you and sold you out in the process" and that by doing so they've done a great deal of damage.

Essentially your argument is irresistible, but it leads to a bleak place for me - I am the only person I know that uses Linux. The last time I attended a LUG it was to hear a senior member stand up and say "if you're new to Linux, please don't come to LUG meetings as you annoy those of who know what we're doing". I'm not a programmer or a sysadmin, I was drawn to Linux for philosophical reasons. Most LUG members that I've met are either Linux users because they work in a Uni' IT Department or because they are programmers. In both cases they seemed less than interested in the political side of things.
It's not a social movement, or a brotherhood, it's a group of largely socially crippled individuals, many of whom are so dysfunctional that they can't even stand other Linux users, yet alone anyone else.
As with food - vegetarians avoid meat - vegans stand up and say "meh, vegetarians are sell outs." And then fruitarians stand up and say "vegans? pff, sell outs". So it seems like what ever stance one takes, someone else thinks you're a sell out or that you haven't gone far enough. If you took recent developments to heart you would have no cell phone, no landline, no internet, no TV, no clothes that you didn't make yourself, cut from cloth you'd made yourself, no food you hadn't grown yourself, used no medicine developed by Big Pharma and you would be hungry, cold and destitute and your life expectancy would be short, to say the least (I live in England, the climate is not conducive to such a lifestyle, even if I possessed the wherewithall to live that way, which I don't). So, compromse is unavoidable and I guess it comes down to setting the bar where we each feel able to set it.

You said... When you use applications on your computer, it is your own business you are doing. Nobody else should have any control on your business. If you use proprietary software, the owner of the software is in control. Not you. He imposes DRMs if he wishes, he grants the NSA as access to your system if he wishes, he does not solve the bugs you suffer from if he wishes, etc. You are helpless.

When I walk down the street I am helpless against the possibility that someone I encounter may wish me harm. In this sense, the bad man always has the upper hand because evil intent is an active force, whereas passive peacefulness is just that - passive. I have the right to walk where I'm walking, going about my business, without fear or risk. Only by insisting that everyone's thoughts be laid bare could I be free to walk in safety or know who to avoid. I see no difference between that and the insistence on all code being open(with the obvious exception that thoughts are inherently private and a world in which there was no privacy of thought would be intolerable) and so once again, the comparison falls flat.

For me, the "operating system" goes up to the graphical applications, up to the video games. That is the source of our misunderstanding.

As onpon4 pointed out, your analogy with physical goods is not appropriate. When you share software/music/movies/anything immaterial, you copy them: nothing is subtracted from you. On the contrary, when you share your fruits, the part your neighbor gets is subtracted from you.

Anyway, even for physical goods, sharing is being a good member of the community. It is not because people should not be forced to share that it becomes OK to prohibit sharing fruits with the neighborhood! The same holds with software. Freedom 2 is a freedom. Not an obligation. And people deserve this freedom, i.e., nobody should be allowed to prohibit sharing.

Your new analogy is not appropriate either. When you walk on the pavement, there is no reason you should have more/less control on the space than the other pedestrian. The pavement is public. On it, every citizen is equal.

When you use applications on your computer, it is your own business you are doing. Nobody else should have any control on your business. If you use proprietary software, the owner of the software is in control. Not you. He imposes DRMs if he wishes, he grants the NSA as access to your system if he wishes, he does not solve the bugs you suffer from if he wishes, etc. You are helpless. And the nature of the application (e.g., an "essential" kernel or a "luxury" video game) does not change anything. On the other side, free software programs have no owner and the user is in control of her own business. As she deserves it.

Your last paragraph confuses me. As far as I understand the little battle is for having free software video games (it is little because not the most popular and durable kind of software; a "luxury" as you put it)... but, then, you are arguing in favor of engaging in this battle and refusing proprietary video games!