But it must.
If it doesn't, then it could be considered an accessory to the crime, perhaps an instigator. Yes it's stupid but yes it happens. It would be like if you gave away guns to anyone who came by. If one of those guns was used for murder, it's not your fault they were murdered, but you DID help him.
No free software has any such restriction on the use of the program; that's part of the definition of free software. Some of them
request that you don't use it to perform illegal tasks (for example, a program I quite like called Convert Lit which converts Microsoft Reader .lit files into free eBook formats requests that you don't use it for illegal eBook sharing), but there's no legally binding agreement to that effect. As far as I know, no free software developer has ever been held liable for any such instigation.
Why is it their right? Is it the user's right to modify a book? A movie? We're not talking about a physical item here, we're talking about an idea, intellectual property. I can't go out, take Harry Potter, rename all the characters, make them American, and put it back out as "Steve Plotter" so why should it be a right for me to take your hard work, your beautifully written algorithms, change them to fit my needs, then redistribute it claiming they're mine?
This paragraph has so many issues I would like to address that it's difficult to know where to start. I guess I will begin by pointing out that the term "intellectual property" is vacuous propaganda; first, because it suggests that it is
possible to own an idea, but also because it refers collectively to a group of laws that have nothing important in common as though they are somehow related, including copyright law, patent law and trademark law.
The next point I'd like to make is that books and movies are works of art, not functionality. A computer program, with a few exceptions including computer games, exists to serve some functional purpose, to perform some kind of task. Therefore, the need for control over its operation is much greater than for a work that exists simply for entertainment purposes. So, even were I to concede that books and movies are beyond the scope of what should be free to modify, there is no implication there for software.
Thirdly, however, I would like to stress that I do
not concede that books and movies are beyond the scope of what should be free to modify. Adaptation of artistic works is the process by which culture develops and evolves; if every artistic work exists inside its own little bubble that can't be touched by anyone else, we don't so much have culture as stasis. To emphasise this point, consider that Shakespeare would have been liable for copyright infringement on several of his plays if today's copyright law had been in effect when he wrote them.
Finally, I don't suggest for a minute you should be allowed to redistribute someone else's software claiming that it is your own, and as far as I know neither does anyone else in the free software community. Nearly every free software licence I know of (the exception being the rather amusing DWTFYWWI licence) expressly requires that the original author's name be included in redistributed versions, whether they have been modified or not. Just because you're free to improve on someone else's work doesn't mean you're free to strip their name away from it.
And that is the real key of the matter: ownership. With a physical item like a car or a chair, you can modify it then re-sell it. But when you sell it, you can't RE-sell it. You buy one car, modify it, sell it, then you no longer have it. A complete transfer of ownership.
With software you can't do that. If I take CS6, modify it, then give it to my friend, I still have it. I can do this forever with no cost to me. Now if I had spent a long time writing CS6 for money, I'd be really angry if someone gave it away for free. Especially if the money I would make off selling copies is the only way I get to eat for the next year.
Well, that would probably be down to short-sightedness on your part for choosing such an unsustainable means of making money. When you have to restrict others from doing what their technology would naturally allow them to do in order to make money, you're doing it wrong. The fact that copies of software can be so easily made is precisely the reason why software needs to be free; so that people can use the technology at hand to its full potential.
A computer isn't a printing press - it's much lighter on resources, for a start - and so the concept of copyright that was developed in order to regulate the use of the printing press cannot be applied without revision to the computer; when people attempt this, ridiculous concepts like ownership of software result. Unfortunately, this concept is now so widely accepted by mainstream culture that the natural state of affairs is viewed as a revolutionary idea, and the greatest obstacle to free software becoming more widely used is the propaganda now taught in schools all throughout Western society.
Most programming jobs do depend on the sale of the software. If the software doesn't do well, there might not BE another title for you to program. Especially now when loans are hard to get, and you know that no software development company (unless they're huge) can afford years of development without taking out massive loans.
Why don't you try looking at any job website or employment section of a newspaper sometime? Try counting how many programming jobs are based on selling software to the public, and how many programming jobs involve developing software for internal use within a business. Judging by what you've said here, I think you'll be surprised at how little work out there actually depends on selling software.
And the format DOES need to be locked, even for the player. If it wasn't, anyone with sufficient skill could write their own tools. Obviously this has already happened with Adobe PDF and PSD files though the copies are not as good as the original since they makers didn't have access to the source code. But imagine if they did: Adobe Flash Tools - Free. Who would pay for it if it's gratis?
Adobe would then have no reason to continue writing their software. Why would they? If someone else is going to do it almost as good and draw the customers, what would they make money on? Customer support? Not for the Free ones they can't. (since they didn't make it)
The PDF specification is free (an important contribution to the free software and internet communities, for which I thank Adobe), and Adobe still seems to be managing just fine with their implementation of it. Not that I support the sale of proprietary software, mind you, but evidently an open specification doesn't mean that proprietary implementations of it are necessarily doomed. But that's missing the real point here; you seem to be arguing that Adobe's profit margins are more important than the rights of the consumer. Who cares if the people are locked into using software that they can't share, can't maintain and can't get support for from anyone other than Adobe, as long as Adobe keeps making money?
If your argument held any weight at all, and sale of software was necessary to produce good results, then people would still use Adobe's implementation, that being the only good one. The fact that you think free alternatives are a threat to Adobe's proprietary implementation shows that even you acknowledge the potential of free software to come to a standard at least comparable with proprietary software.
Finally, you seem to be missing a key point with regard to support for free software. The whole idea is that the support monopoly present when software is proprietary disappears, and
anyone with the skill to program and familiarity with the code can offer it; in this way, the free support market will drive support prices down and quality of support will improve. It doesn't matter whether or not Adobe created a free implementation of Flash; they can still offer support for it because
anyone can offer support for it, since everyone has the right to share and modify it.
Perhaps, but to do something well, people need motivation. That you can't deny. And the most universal motivator in the world right now is Money. Not saying it's the best not saying it's the worst, but it's the most common.
You've only addressed the second part of what I said. The fact remains that subjugating one's user base is not the only means to make money with software; much like robbing a bank, it's a way to get a lot of money quickly if you know what you're doing, but it isn't the right thing to do, nor is it a sustainable form of development. In fact, charging for software in this way encourages shelfware - software that a lot of people will buy but almost never use - because money is made from sales and spent on support. The more people buy it, the more money is made; similarly, the fewer people are using it, the lesser the expense of supporting the product. In other words, the proprietary software model works best when people are developing flashy, but useless software.
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't linux based OSes crash really easily until you have them setup just right? You know the jokes: Install a new video card, break your linux install.
I think the difference is that those who use Linux based OSes can fix their own stuff so they don't complain as much. Those who can't fix their own stuff get very angry very quickly when something goes wrong.
I've never had any major issues with GNU+Linux; the occasional X11 glitch, and from time to time issues caused by user error (i.e., me typing commands into a root terminal without thinking), but the base system itself is extremely stable. Drivers are another issue, and often have more to do with hardware vendors not supporting GNU+Linux than a flaw in the operating system itself.
I will add, however, that a flaw in the GNU+Linux system which doesn't exist in either Windows or Mac OS is that Linux is a monolithic kernel; in other words, all of the file system management, process management, device drivers and such are contained within a single program. If one part of it crashes, the whole thing goes down. Fortunately, because Linux crashes are so rare, this usually isn't a problem, but it also means that none of these parts of the kernel can be modified without having root privileges and recompiling the whole thing (with the exception of dynamically loadable kernel modules). The GNU kernel, being a microkernel, won't have this problem, but it's still quite some way from being stable. As for Windows and Mac OS, they both use hybrid kernels (the NT kernel and XNU, respectively) which are somewhere between monolithic kernels and microkernels.