Many people, as would I, like to live in a world or a country where
technology and science are separated from politics. Well, we do not live in
such a place, and likely as not, never will.

At the core of Linux is freedom. After all, without freedom Linux would not
exist. Furthermore, without continued freedom, Linux will be captured by
big companies, peppered with patents and copyrighted works, and be much
more difficult, perhaps impossible, to obtain freely and legally.

Take SuSE Linux. Because of inclusion of various (non-free) copyrighted
works. The professional version is not yours to freely distribute. While
many on this forum think that this is OK, I do not. 

IMHO, this is a slippery slope. The Linux market already has distributions
that are non-free, and this is a problem. Like the U.S. Constitution,
"free" works are being sold, and the proper owners of these works are being
denied rights previously held. Read: 

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040707022255404

The point ISN'T that SuSE makes a "free" version available as a bone, but
that it creates a "non free" version as a lock.

The free vs non-free is not trivial. As a software developer, I need access
to the "non-free" professional versions of the various distributions to
properly QA and test software that I write.

*We* (or at least open source developers) started Linux (and various
projects) because *WE* didn't want this. This is not what we had in mind.
RMS even thinks this is wrong:

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-05-31-009-26-NW-LL

The Linux distribution and its GNU components should be on its own media,
and any "value added" (Read freedom limiting) proprietary software should
be included on additional separate media.

We should not have to pay for software that is created by us, for everyone.