Really Sort of Missing the Point

That's a good piece. No matter if you are a "radical" Free Software advocate or a more "pragmatic" Open Source fanboi, this piece sums up the dilemma you're in. If you are serious about treating animals fairly and want to lead by example, you have to become a vegetarian. Most people will probably agree with you, that animals should be treated fairly, but will eat meat anyway. Some of them might choose to buy meat and other animal products from sources that has treated those animals fairly. Most people do not care at all and eat what suits them most.

With software, the situation is similar. There are only a few advocates of Free Software willing to banish all non-free software from their computers. Many people will agree, that software should be free (as in freedom), but most of them will still use some bits and pieces of non-free software. Most people don't care at all and just run whatever OS suits them most.

Some things are different, though: More people are educated about vegetarianism and campaigns like PETA than about software and licensing. For most people in this world it is a simple matter of ethics to treat animals fairly, it's an idea easy to agree with because it is within our nature to do so. With software, the matter is different. Most people have yet to realise that there are political and ethical aspects to software, at all. The reasons for that are many but there are ways to raise awareness.

I've once organised a speech for the People&Planet Society in Edinburgh. P&P are a society of young political activists and are interested in many different topics, globalisation, fair trade, human rights to name just a few. We invited Gareth Bowker from the Free Software Foundation Europe to give a talk about Free Software, DRM and so-called Trusted Computing at one of their meetings. Most of them weren't computer-gurus at all. However, the political and ethical arguments Gareth presented convinced so many we had to organise a Linux Install Fest to accommodate for all the people that expressed interest to give GNU/Linux a try after the talk.