I'm trying to reconcile the concept of "free" software with the concept of "open". Everything you're saying is perfectly within the confines of open, and is all correct - it compeletely illustrates why there is a schism between the two. The thing is, there is something to be said for bettering society - there's a reason why free public education is made available for people by the government, and thank goodness for that. But there's a line somewhere in all of this that needs to be drawn, and somewhere out there there have to be software developers who are both open and free, who are willing to code for the betterment of society as a motivation and not just profit.

The problem is that the existing community of programmers does not contain this ethic, and is actually somewhat biased towards their own agenda rather than a big picture social agenda. I'm not advocating a "software welfare state" but I do think that mankind as a whole would benefit greatly from the equivalent of a social program for software.