@anonicus >A computer to most people is a entertainment, web browsing device, and even being something for productivity that isn't Programming.
The whole concept of a computer is that it's a machine that it can be programmed to do any operation you want.

It's downright bizarre to choose to use a computer, but then never doing any sort of programming task with it - it's like choosing to use a calculator and only ever using it to do addition and neglecting to ever something as basic as a subtraction or multiplication operate - you're better off not bothering with a calculator that needs batteries and just do the addition on paper or in your head.

Sadly there are companies that release computers that are so heavily restricted that they lack basic functionality like installing (the user shouldn't be troubled by those subtraction and multiplication features) and tout that as a feature in the advert.

Governments are also guilty of attempting to force all civilians to use proprietary computing, even when some civilians would be better off not using a computer at all.

>The flaw to the GNU philosophy is expecting people to learn Programming to change how the software works
Unfortunately, changing how a specific program works requires modifying the software, which is an act of programming.

Trying to change the software without programming is like trying to do a square root without using math.

When it comes to merely operating software, no programming is required, although many people are mislead into thinking that using a computer properly with GNU bash is programming and think it's above them until they actually try it and realize how easy it is.

As always, microsoft has ruined the concept of the shell, by implementing the worst possible shell multiple times that of course is unusable.

Once a user has learned the basic concept of commands, flags, files, stdin, stdout, stderr, directories and pipes, they'll very quickly work out how to change how software operates to suit them.

If a user doesn't like how a program prints out each output into a newline, stdout can be piped into into GNU tr and newline can be changed to a space like so; `strings gg.png | tr '\n' ' '` - without any programming required.

>In which is a difficult task on its own and takes a lot of time to learn.
That entirely depends on the programming task. Some modifications are trivial and only require 5 minutes of learning about programming - other tasks are very difficult and require a lot of learning and application of skill.

With the wonder of the internet, you can often just search the correct keywords and a lot of the time you'll get an answer on how to complete a task, programming or otherwise.

You can also hop onto irc and join any channel that has skilled hackers in it and chances are, if you properly formulate your question and wait, you'll get an answer as to what you need to do to pull that off and if you wait some more, chances are the same guy will apply their own immense skillset and give you the command you need to run, or some another guy will.

Configuring and debugging software can range from trivia to extremely difficult, but doing so doesn't require any programming unless the developer is insane and make editing the config file require programming JavaScript - thankfully very little of such software exists.

>And if most people do not want to learn programming, It becomes no different than Proprietary to the User
Just because a user is currently not capable of editing or understanding the software, doesn't make the user divided and helpless, like what proprietary software does.

The user can ask other people to help them, or later decide that they are now willing to learn and learn how to make the modification.

Even if only 5% of people are programmers, the other 95% can ask the 5% to make the wanted modification (chances are the programmers wanted to do such thing anyway, just didn't prioritize it as nobody asked), or even pay a programmer to do so, as with free software the users can help each other.

>other than the mental thought of "If it's Open Source, it's not spying on me.
Unfortunately, a lot of software that claims to be focused on "open source" does indeed have spyware implemented at some stage, although if that software is actually free software, someone always goes and takes that out and released a fixed version.

>Other people can change and modify how it works but not me."
Such sort of mindset is a defeatist mindset, very much unlike my GNU/Mindset, which is to know that I'm hopeless and don't yet have 1% of the skills of the true hackers, but I'll do it anyway, no matter what it takes, with pure GNU/will.

>It's very curious to see your thoughts and opinions from someone who's Extremely GNU sided.
I'm on the side of freedom, although GNU happens to be on the side of freedom without fail or ruinous compromise.