The problem I see, though, is that some people are never going to care about the politcal side of F/OSS. Ever. They’re going to look at us all as liberals trying force socialism down their throats, or they’re just not going to have the time or interest in helping yet another cause. However, if you can sell these people on cost or features, because they are quick and easy sell, they will still help break the grip of propietary software (for a time, at least) whether they know it or not. How many Firefox users are using it because they care about web standards (me), and how many are using it because it doesn’t get spyware (my mom)? But every user means more market share, which means web developers have to take Firefox (and thus web standards) seriously.

Cost is easy for any proprietor to meet but no proprietor can supply software freedom. For large seat clients, proprietors are occasionally willing to foot the bill because of the promise of sales down the road. Not that long ago, the New York Times discussed an internal Microsoft memo which revealed that Microsoft maintains a slush fund to cover the license costs of giving away licenses to their proprietary software. Microsoft uses these licenses to sway clients away from switching to free software. The memo read, in part, “Under NO circumstances lose against Linux[sic]“. Many educational institutions buy site licenses and distribute licensed proprietary software to students for a reduced fee or zero cost. There is significant incentive for proprietors to participate in site licensing with educational institutions because it trains impressionable young students early.

For small seat clients, copyright infringement or gifts will displace the cost of proprietary software. In your case, someone could have bought a Microsoft Office license for those parents and saved them some money. If cost was the most salient issue in the discussion, it’s reasonable to believe that these parents would have thought that someone was doing them a favor by helping them put on the shackles of proprietary software at a low price.

The cost of proprietary software is rather easily pushed aside for a lot of computer users, but the lack of software freedom is not. If cost is of chief importance, users will have no reason to stick with free software when faced with a proprietor’s offer of a reduced price. When users can get a copy of the proprietary software without paying for it, they will see that as a bargain because cost was framed as the most important consideration. I’m not against discussing cost, I’m against discussions of cost that exclude any discussion of why software freedom is important. Low cost is a side effect of the freedom to share. But unfortunately there seems to be no time for freedom talk. I think excluding freedom talk is a step in the wrong direction because we can’t expect people to value what they don’t know anything about.

I’m pretty sure I sold the parents of an incoming freshman at my university on at least trying OpenOffice.org a few days ago, and the two most important points to them was that it would meet their son/daughter’s needs, and that it would save them a couple hundred dollars since they wouldn’t have to buy MS Office.

While I agree with you that not having to beg a monopoly and not being tied down to corporate whims is a good thing, if an open source program will meet someone’s needs, sell them on whatever point will get them to give it a try.