I'm a developer but I don't develop most of the programs that I use every day. I don't even read the source code of these programs. With regard to programs tha

I'm a developer but I don't develop most of the programs that I use every day. I don't even read the source code of these programs. With regard to programs that I don't develop, I'm very much a user who enjoys that almost everything I use comes nicely in packages with Ubuntu. Almost. A few programs that I use need patches or modifications that aren't included in stock Ubuntu. Because I use free software the appropriate patches do exist and are available on which ever website their authors have published them. Or they circulate around on the internet. So, the features I desire suddenly become available via side-channel distribution. Often someone keeps prebuilt binaries of the software available with the same patches compiled in. Or they're available via alternate or backported APT repositories. In some cases, being a developer myself, I download the patches and dpkg-buildpackage them into binaries myself, but generally I not. If I had used proprietary software: - No third party could write patches for it; - I would have to stick with whatever the author decides to release; - I couldn't run old binaries if my OS went through some big upgrade and the author didn't bother to support a yet another binary; - I also wouldn't enjoy the vast repository of prepackaged and configured software that comes with Ubuntu: unless the author was agreeing to take part in an OS distribution, I would have to search, download, and install each program separately. Free software is much more than a single developer's ability to hack on other people's code. Free software is a whole ecosystem that benefits each participant. But since all software will come down to programming, that software ecosystem comes down to individual developers' ability to hack.