I believe it is a user's right to know and verify what a specific piece of software does to his data and machine and adjust that behaviour if needed. For that,

I believe it is a user's right to know and verify what a specific piece of software does to his data and machine and adjust that behaviour if needed. For that, they need access to the source code. I believe it is a user's right to share the software and configuration they use to help out their neighbour and for that they need to be able to share copies of the software. Lastly, I obviously believe it is a user's right to run the software wherever they want. So yeah, free software is a right in my opinion, like freedom of information and free speech. Unfortunately, not many companies care about it (yet). You're also right in the point that DDG not setting OSM as the default map provider won't actually hurt OSM, really. But it does piss me off a bit when a company always talks about how "privacy friendly" and "open source" they are yet they completely dismiss the (related) freedom aspect. Because "privacy" and "open source" are just the buzzwords the media is talking about. Does DDG not know about freedom? Does DDG not care about freedom? Why? I know they probably have a good reason for that and good intent in what they're doing but without having an answer to these questions, it just looks like they're grabbing the low hanging fruit sometimes.