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Joseph Graham has written a very short blog post about software freedom and the direction we might take to achieve it.
The free software movement, founded in the 80s by Richard Stallman and supported by the Free Software Foundations 1, 2, 3, 4, preaches that we need software that gives us access to the code and the copyright permissions to study, modify and redistribute. While I feel this is entirely true, I think it's not the best way to explain Free Software to people.
I think the problem we have is better explained more like this:
"Computer technology is complicated and new. Education about computers is extremely poor among all age groups. Technology companies have taken advantage of this lack of education to brainwash people into accepting absurd abuses of their rights."
Source : The Free Software movement is Barking up the wrong tree
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday December 27 2017, @03:30AM
Yes, the risk is not of code being locked up, but of code appropriation.
And it is true that there are currently outstanding cases of illegal code appropriation - but unlike the case of "evil GPL" the distribution of such programs are in fact ongoing crimes, and it is almost certain that the source for the illegally derived programs will be released if anyone with standing cares to take the issue to court. The GPL is after all extremely well tested at this point, and the standard penalties for copyright infringement extremely high. Offhand I can't think of a single example of a person or organization choosing to pay the penalties and discontinue their product rather than releasing the source.