Is free software major league or minor?

“The Free Software Foundation likes to talk about free software
in “ethical†terms, claiming that
users should have a fundamental right to the
“four freedoms†in all software
(i.e. that proprietary software shouldn’t
exist).

“This is the strong claim for free software. But as an ethical
claim, it’s predicated on the assumption that
free software can fill the niches that proprietary software does
(although you wouldn’t guess that from most of
the rhetoric that has been published).

“If it can’t, then eliminating proprietary
software deprives users of fundamental functionality. You have no
freedom in software that doesn’t exist. As
such, if the software cannot be written as free software (e.g.
because the business model is just too thin and no one wants to
volunteer), then losing the proprietary alternative represents a
net loss of end user freedom.”

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