The chief reason proprietary software is to be eschewed is its effect on society. Proprietary software separates us from each other and makes us dependent on the proprietor who gains control over how we communicate with each other and get jobs done. We are incapable of helping one another in a way that isn’t predetermined by the proprietor. You can’t help your friends by passing on a copy of a proprietary program (even one that is useful for you and would be useful for anyone else who has a comparable job). You can’t help your community by sharing copies with them, or modifying the software to make it more useful for them (even doing so commercially).

However, there are other reasons why proprietary software is to be avoided. Software that works is fairly inaccurate as well as inadequate to understanding how proprietary software adversely affects us as people; it’s hard to find people who know what they’re talking about who will agree that proprietary software is trustworthy. After all, it’s uninspectable by default, so often determining how well it works is a matter of waiting for bugs to be found and then waiting for the proprietor to fix them (assuming they choose to do so at all). Meanwhile, we all relish the freedom of being able to inspect, modify, and share information about our cars, electrical systems, plumbing systems, and more despite that most people are not technicians of any sort. We think nothing of hiring out to handle these maintenance jobs.

Many people value freedom of speech in its own right, so people are capable of understanding the importance of particular specific freedoms as well as the nice things these freedoms get us. The question is whether people are being taught to think of software in this way. And if they’re not (and I’d agree with you that they’re not), why not and who will pick up the job of accomplishing this?

I look at the fight for software freedom as a campaign of education. And the proprietors are inadvertantly helping by showing what happens when you don’t have the freedoms to run, inspect, share, and modify computer software any time for any reason. In the past 20 years, the free software movement has made incredible strides around the world convincing people of precisely what you claim people will not consider. In the US, this fight is harder to make than in other countries probably because Americans have been taught to think that, metaphorically of course, the sun rises and falls because of businesses.

Finally, you are conflating earning a profit with software freedom. The two are distinct. Small and large organizations (such as those charging hundreds of dollars an hour for modifying GCC, my own far less expensive consultancy, and large firms like IBM) see that the proprietary software distribution business isn’t profitable.

I would be happy to purchase a copy of a tax form preparation program if it were free software. I’d expect that I’d actually pay for access to a 24-7 hotline for help from a real person skilled in the use of the program, a nicely printed manual, a warranty to cover my costs if I’m audited as a result of an error in the program, and a copy of the warranted program (along with its complete corresponding source code). Anyone is free to run, share, inspect, and modify the program but anyone would have the power to not sell a warranty or hotline support for anything but a program that is identical to their warranted version of the program.

From the user’s perspective, IE works, Opera works, Firefox works. What’s the difference? That’ll be even more pronounced when IE 7 comes out.

“Software freedom” is an ideology that doesn’t have any significance to the strong, strong, strong majority of users. And really, why should it? Most of us are perfectly happy getting other products in our lives from companies that exist for profit and don’t reveal every inside detail of their operations.