[myhf]

Richard Stallman had a frustrating experience thirty years ago when he couldn't debug a software issue for lack of access to the source code. Since then he has used "evil" to mean anything that impedes programmers' ability to read source code with the original debugging symbols, regardless of whether those programmers are working on evil products.

[theseoafs]

Stallman's critiques of proprietary software are much more well-reasoned than "once I had trouble debugging an issue in a closed-source software project".

[wpietri]

You two seem to be talking about different things. Motivating experiences are different than the reasons we use to persuade other people to really to our cause.