"Shane M. Coughlan" shane@shaneland.co.uk writes:
It does affect every phone, computer, car and television on the planet.
When using this argument, we have to be ready when the person responds: "but my phone works fine, so does my TV, car, and often my computer".
We need to highlight the differences in software developed by a community and software developed by a company. I think. But we also have to be careful not to fall into open source style arguments about collaborative development making better software.
Free software is sometimes limited, but the limits are not there because they have to be there to support a company's business model or contracts or business relationships. Any limitations in our software are due to an honest lack of resources and those limitations can be fixed as soon as the resources are available.
(My digital camera won't let me record audio without also recording video, so my gigabyte of memory can only record 47 minutes of audio. This causes frustration, which could be fixed if users of that camera were free to modify the software. The next technology purchase I made was a digital music player. I made sure it could run the Rockbox GPL'd firmware.)