Mixing the concepts of functionality and freedom into one concept do not work.
If the program has more functionality, but limits the users in way of Intellectual freedom or Liberties, it doesnt make people more "freer to do stuff". What you got is a program with less freedom but more functionality. Two distinct property of the program. Let me make an exmaple.
Is a video editing program "very free" if it have every function in the world, best usability, and is perfect in every sense, but as a legal requirement it demands all copyright ownership of any video edited? Is that program more "free" than say VLMC? What if the proprietary did allow the users to retain the copyright, but, only if the video included a ad snippet? What if non-ad included was okey, but the video had to first to go a central censor bureau to check that no kittens was harmed? what if the video instead went to the local copyright bureau to be checked for any copyright infringement? What if it included a hidden water stamp?
Adding ads or sending videos to be accepted by a copyright central are not very far away. Youtube already does this. If the video editing tool was bundled exclusively with youtube (a extreme an absurd concept I know), the examples would be instantly true. So far, I don't know of any video editing tool directly connected to youtube, but then I haven't checked on every video editing tool on iphone and android. I would be surprised if there didnt exist at least one.
Hidden watermarks already happen by printer software and some screenshot programs. Some digital cameras also do this. It not a really a big leap to say that a proprietary editing tools would/could auto-include watermarking if there was a business case for it. I would imagine that a photo editing tool bundled with getty or flickr could very easy find a business case to know when a image get posted outside its domain. Actually, there might already exist some photo-editing tools on iphone/android that do this already.
>Mixing the concepts of functionality and freedom into one concept do not work.
I don't mix them. Reality does. While the two sources are theoretically orthogonal, they are also practically connected -- and it's easy to see why: proprietary a la Adobe equals huge company and tons of paid programmers, including people doing the necessary but less glamorous grunt work, i.e more functionality. So, most of the time, in desktop application software (server OSS software fares better) people have to chose between a more featured proprietary solution, and a less featured open source one. And more often than not they chose the latter, as they for example chose Windows/OS X over Linux. We cannot just turn a blind eye to that choice.
>If the program has more functionality, but limits the users in way of Intellectual freedom or Liberties, it doesnt make people more "freer to do stuff". What you got is a program with less freedom but more functionality. Two distinct property of the program. Let me make an example. Is a video editing program "very free" if it have every function in the world, best usability, and is perfect in every sense, but as a legal requirement it demands all copyright ownership of any video edited?
Well, if what I want to do is make a movie, and I cannot do it at all with an OSS program due to functionality limitations, then yes, the proprietary one is freer, even if I have to give them my copyright.
Which is a strawman argument, by the way. Proprietary software mostly asks for your money, and for you not to tamper with the source. No video editing program asks to hand them over your copyright.
>What if the proprietary did allow the users to retain the copyright, but, only if the video included a ad snippet?
What if? It's between the users and the program. If they accept that, then they want to use the program despite the ad snippet.
If the program has more functionality, but limits the users in way of Intellectual freedom or Liberties, it doesnt make people more "freer to do stuff". What you got is a program with less freedom but more functionality. Two distinct property of the program. Let me make an exmaple.
Is a video editing program "very free" if it have every function in the world, best usability, and is perfect in every sense, but as a legal requirement it demands all copyright ownership of any video edited? Is that program more "free" than say VLMC? What if the proprietary did allow the users to retain the copyright, but, only if the video included a ad snippet? What if non-ad included was okey, but the video had to first to go a central censor bureau to check that no kittens was harmed? what if the video instead went to the local copyright bureau to be checked for any copyright infringement? What if it included a hidden water stamp?
Freedom is more than functionality.