[Image description: A fox-woman wearing a dress the color of the Debian logo is being pulled by the sleeves on one side by a gnu man and on the other side bu a penguin. She has an annoyed expression. The gnu man says: “Debian, why do you offer a non-free firmware repo? You’re so close to being one of the few fully free distros… Don’t you believe in free software?”
The penguin says: “Why isn’t the necessary firmware installed by default ? It’s such a pain when you install and it can’t connect to network… You’re so close to being practical, Debian !” ]
As a freeware stan, i dont disagree. Ease-of-use v. a one time fee for many ppl is going to be a no brainer in not the direction i would go with. Nevertheless, i still imagine that the more free software alternatives there are, the more the overall quality of software will go up as well. Similarly, if there are more software alternatives, the higher the chance that ppl choose a stable option by an independent dev asking for a reasonable price.