Why is it ethical not to write a program at all (Was: referencing non-free software)

[Dmitry Alexandrov]

> Also, why it's ethical not to write the program at all (giving users
> _no_ freedom to do anything)

Because proprietor is not ‘giving’ or ‘presenting’ freedoms to users, he is 
*returning* it.

Naturally users do have their essential rights, it’s a copyright law that takes 
them away, establishing a _monopoly_ for the benefit of an author or (which is 
more likely) an author’s employer.  Thus, a free software supporter would argue 
that a moral duty of an ethical proprietor is to deny to accept socially 
harmful privileges and return users their essential rights back.

> but unethical to write it and then not GPL it.

There are many other ethical (that is free) software licences besides GNU GPL.  
Three (or four) of them are other GNU licences, by the way.