This topic has gone wildly astray, but meh, I'll dive in.
Being able to choose between open technologies and free software and proprietary software is barely even a choice if you want to maintain a completely free and open market for software and ideas.
Choice isn't just about how many players work with x codec, it's about allowing the creation and maintenance of choice in situations where it hasn't previously existed or is becoming limited, in which free software and open technologies inherently encourage. Proprietary software doesn't - it helps limit and reinforce the decline in choice, and helps further the creation of new monopolies where neither businesses both new and old nor users are able to break it - certainly not within a reasonable time frame to not be harmful to both.
A society that allows one individual to encroach on another individuals freedom is not a free society. To stop that from happening you create rules and laws that stop people stepping over those barriers, but irrespective of those laws everyone has a guaranteed set of freedoms. To define freedom as entirely about choice is a myopic view of freedom.
Being able to choose between open technologies and free software and proprietary software is barely even a choice if you want to maintain a completely free and open market for software and ideas.
Choice isn't just about how many players work with x codec, it's about allowing the creation and maintenance of choice in situations where it hasn't previously existed or is becoming limited, in which free software and open technologies inherently encourage. Proprietary software doesn't - it helps limit and reinforce the decline in choice, and helps further the creation of new monopolies where neither businesses both new and old nor users are able to break it - certainly not within a reasonable time frame to not be harmful to both.
A society that allows one individual to encroach on another individuals freedom is not a free society. To stop that from happening you create rules and laws that stop people stepping over those barriers, but irrespective of those laws everyone has a guaranteed set of freedoms. To define freedom as entirely about choice is a myopic view of freedom.
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