Software needs to be free

Yesterday, there was that message on pro-linx that several projects using bitkeeper for managing their sourcecode now have problems because bitkeeper will no longer be available for free. The most important project using bitkeeper was the linux-kernel. Luckily, the kernel developers developed an alternative called git and seem to be happy with it.
The bitkeeper-issue was one issue showing how using proprietary software on free systems can lead into problems. But at all, it was not that big issue. The source was still free and the projects could switch to other software like git, svn or monotone.

Now, another issue has been brought up recently: Current OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta versions need the proprietary Sun Java Runtime Environment to work. This is imho a much more grave issue. Imagine Sun does the same as BitMoover and says from one day to the other that they won't provide java for free any more. Or, even worse, if sun decides not to support future linux-versions. At the moment, this might not be that big issue, because most parts of OOo are still written in C. But imageine larger parts of it are java-based, this could mean OOo would be suddenly unavailable on Linux (or other free/alternative Systems).
Luchily, the FSF is working on getting OOo to work with the free GCJ (GNU Java Compiler).
(Beside that, although it's always claimed, sun java is limited to a very small number of architectures and thus not very portable)

Another very dangerous threat to free software are binary drivers. Some days ago, NVidia released a new, proprietary linux-driver.
They removed support for some older graphics chips.
What does that mean? If you own such a card, your opportunities are very limited:

• You can continue using the old drivers as long as they work with current kernels and xorg-versions. If they fail with a kernel-update, you can stick to that kernel. If security-hole appear in that kernel, you have a problem.
• You can switch to the free drivers in xorg and use your card, originally probably an expensive, state-of-the-art 3d-gaming-card, without any 3d-functions.
• You can buy another graphics-card.

That's the consequence of binary drivers. If a vendor stops supporting your device, there's just nothing you can do.
The bad thing with graphics-cards is that currently there is no real alternative. ATI is releasing binary drivers, which are very unstable and lacking a lot of features (Jon Lech Johansen wrote about that recently). As I read in the changelog of xorg, they are working on supporting newer ATI-chips (probably by reverse engineering). For the future, maybe the OpenGraphics-Project will be an alternative.

Beside that, there's another problem with binary drivers. Did you ever tell people "Open Source is good, because many people can look at the code and find bugs, security holes and backdoors"? Well, if you load binary drivers in your kernel space, you can just forget this argument.

Another good text I found about that issue is Freedom 0, here is the german version Freiheit 0.

I often read in forums and hear from people "don't be so ideologic, not everything can be free", "RMS and the FSF are stupid, they are too ideologic", "I'm happy that nvidia releases drivers at all" etc. I hope I brought some arguments why in my opinion, free software is important and why I try to avoid the use of non-free software whereever possible.