You're confused. Stallman isn't advocating for software users to become IT experts or computer programming. Users do not need any form of IT aptitude to study and modify the free software they want.

Imagine you have a recipe for a cake that you love but you have an idea of an extra ingredient that you want to add to make it even better. However, the creator of the recipe has locked it down so you can only make the cake exactly as he intended.

Now let's imagine you somehow manage to add your extra ingredient. The cake takes even better and you want to share your new recipe with your friends and other people online so they can enjoy the cake too. Whoops, that's illegal, you've now been thrown in jail.

Now also imagine that you find another recipe in the book to make a really nice pie. However, when you try to make the pie there's not enough pastry! You realise there must have been a mistake in the recipe so you try and change it. But wait, you can't because the creator has locked it down so that it can only be used exactly as he made it.

Proprietary code is like those recipes.

>>55072615
even if you don't want to modify the program, other people do, and free software a.) allows them to do that, and b.) allows you to benefit from their work.

>>55073515
You fuckin' doughnut, you don't eat software.

>>55073566
a better analogy would be math.
Imagine people never published proofs of their work.
All they did was claiming that they were able to do something independently.
Some things could be reverse engineered, but overall it would make it so much harder for everyone to make improvements.
And even when you find some better way, you are not allowed to publish it as it might infringe on someones idea.

>>55073566
>thisisbait.jpg

>>55073515
>>55073532
>>55073576
>>55073577
t. freetard

>>55073582
Free software advocates want computer science to be a scientific field.
Do you hate science?

Proprietary software, when it stops getting supported by its creator, ceases to be useful. It dissipates, the utility and function lost forever.
Imagine if shakespeare's plays had been deleted from reality when the playwright died.
That's proprietary software.

>>55072615
>So what?

It's dead, essentially.

>>55072615
As a general rule more people working on a project usually makes it worse. Everyone has their own ideas about what should be done. No one can agree on anything and then the forking begins.

This is why 99% of foss software is complete shit.

>>55075462
most of the time it's a few people working on a project and many giving them input on how to make the program better. Not like in big companies were a team of low-techs comes up with most of the ideas.

>>55075462
Just look at what happened to apples product design after Jobs died.

>>55073623
Free software is never useful to begin with
And I sure as fuck would've liked Shakespeare's shit to disappear when he died.

So you're content with the software you're using being buggy pieces of shit?

>>55073576
But that's not a good analogy anon

If someone claims his software can open webpages you don't need to reverse engineer it to prove it

>>55075462
What has that do with free software?

You can work alone on a project and keep working on it alone and still release it under a free license.