[ Thanks to Neo Tet
for this link. ]
“When you “buy†a
proprietary software you are not actually buying the software but a
license to use it. Although in many cases the physical package of
the software convinces you that you actually bought something that
belongs to you, in reality what you get is
someone’s permission to use a piece of
software. This does not explain why they will not give you the
source code of the program, so you or someone else can verify what
it does or doesn’t. For sure, a buyer would
complain if a feature was missing from a software, but what about
something extra, something that is not in the list of features,
something that the program is not supposed to be doing or you
don’t want it to do. It is certain that you
have no way of knowing what that thing you
didn’t buy really does.”