Criticism of libre software

Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The-royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are wrLting 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft - Bill Gates, An Open Letter to Hobbyists

main article: Why Software Should Not Have Owners

This is probably the oldest criticism of libre software. There are basically only two IP arguments, one fallacy and misunderstanding.

1. Free software != freeware software.
2. Piracy is theft - definitional retreat
3. The claim that the information may be property - Giving someone ownership of information means restricting everyone else's rights to manage their property to the extent that that property could be used to reproduce and share information. Tldr; information property != material property.
4. Without it, we will die of hunger, lack of innovation and masterpieces - This is the argument that slavery must be maintained, otherwise it will be less cotton, it will be more expensive, it will be of lower quality and the ROI will be lower than expected. Not only was slavery abolished because it was right, but it also turned out that the situation with cotton has not only not worsened, but is much better.

and this is the key point. Either you will get banned or (unbelievably) win the person over. Then it will ask about business modelsPiracy is theft