I certainly did not want to say that for any A and B, if the only way to have B is to have A, then we must have A. In some case, however, B is either a fundame

I certainly did not want to say that for any A and B, if the only way to have B is to have A, then we must have A. In some case, however, B is either a fundamental right, or is necessary to exercise that right. Here, B is the right to privacy and free speech. To exercise your right to free speech, the only reasonable way is to use the Internet. And you need to run computer code to do that. Similarly, to protect your privacy, the code you run (all of it) has to be trustworthy. And I say that to be trustworthy, the code must be free, at least for you. Conclusion: running free code (and only free code) is necessary to exercise some fundamental rights. Therefore, everyone deserve it. The positive/negative freedom argument comes from the facts that (0) the four freedom are way more important than the freedom to proprietarize software, and (1) they conflict. If you want to preserve the greater freedoms, you have to sacrifice the lesser one. Now, people could be reasonable, and respect the four freedom even when they are allowed not to. But I think we can agree that many people aren't reasonable (the most famous example was X). I now understand your usage of the word "property" was indeed legitimate.