The free software community understands that free software gives the user more freedom than proprietary software. Proprietary software confines its users, prohibits them from making changes that would allow everyone to benefit, etc. Free software advocates (myself included) have a habit of claiming that using free (libre) software means the same thing as having freedom.

Okay so I think we can all agree that proprietary software shouldn't be promoted by the FOSS community. It also seems to be acceptable to promote the use of free software applications on proprietary OSes. So why is there a problem with promoting the use of proprietary applications on free OSes?

There has been this argument in the community for a while that using some non-free software to further the Free Software advocacy might be a useful thing. As an example say you have a graphics card that there is no Free Software driver for. Then using a proprietary driver and therefore being able to use a mostly free software OS becomes justifiable.

Now, can somebody really trust proprietary software at this point?

You might know I'm an hybrid kind of guy: I run Free Software as much as I can, but if I have to run proprietary software to have something that works, and that pays the bills, I will. Lately, I'm getting more and more irked by the “Free Software Fundamentalists” that preach that no proprietary software has the right to exist any longer.

Free software is software you can study, modify and share without restriction. But unlike proprietary software, there is no big budget marketing campaign behind it. Rather, people discover it and come to value the freedom it provides. What are these people's motivations for working on free software? Why is community and sharing so important? Why should everyone be using free software?

"...Free software does not have the ability to cause catastrophic damage to the software industry. Proprietary software that spies on and restricts the freedoms of users will be eliminated, but such a change is for the better. More jobs will be created for programmers by companies who want specific changes made to their software.

"Recently, there was some news on linux.com about the Canadian Greens supporting free software in their election platform. I’m not surprised. Greens in general are very supportive towards free software, even the ones that don’t really use much of it themselves (like the Swedish Greens).

"I am a supporter and user of free software (though I admit I have not migrated entirely). I research and write about the social movement aspect of free software, and its potential as a model for alternative social organization beyond the realm of software development. I am inspired by the future envisioned by free software and take heart from its existence here and now.