Without IP we'd be stuck with really shitty software: nobody would ever waste millions in writing something just so somebody else can copy it the next day. Same as medicine patents, copyright of art, etc
Except, y'know, all the most ubiquitous software evolved in the open / academic sphere.
Pretty much any video codec today is built on the quantization techniques utilized by JPEG. PNG is open as well as being built on compression techniques derived from GZIP. HTML and HTTP themselves have been open from their inception. TCP/IP, the very backbone of the modern internet, was an open standard developed by the DoD and most OSes (including Windows) used BSD's stack for decades. OpenGL, the 802 standards, the C programming language, SVG, ISO 9660, JEDEC (SDRAM), USB, Linux, the PC architecture itself. Etc.
Fact is, computers/software are literally the worst place to try to make this argument. It's very stance today is due to the socialistic community of hackers, developers, researchers and hobbyists.
Reality disagrees with you. It so happens that most non-free software is total crap while their free counterparts are truly superior.
Want some examples? Firefox/Chromium vs IE, GNU/Linux and the *BSDs vs windows, youtubedl vs every single nonfree video downloader, gcc/clang vs the ms compiler, emacs vs notepad/VS, etc.
I am not an artist myself however every artist that I know who has made use of Krita, Inkscape and Blender say that they are superior to their non-free counterparts.
As for games I would say that it depends. Wolf:ET/ETLegacy for example is superior to most modern FPS games. I believe that the main problem is the lack of free games and artists instead of the quality of the free games.
Pretty much any video codec today is built on the quantization techniques utilized by JPEG. PNG is open as well as being built on compression techniques derived from GZIP. HTML and HTTP themselves have been open from their inception. TCP/IP, the very backbone of the modern internet, was an open standard developed by the DoD and most OSes (including Windows) used BSD's stack for decades. OpenGL, the 802 standards, the C programming language, SVG, ISO 9660, JEDEC (SDRAM), USB, Linux, the PC architecture itself. Etc.
Fact is, computers/software are literally the worst place to try to make this argument. It's very stance today is due to the socialistic community of hackers, developers, researchers and hobbyists.