…so I don’t think it’s about binaries vs sources, it’s about whose freedoms are on focus…
I’m aware of this. What I meant is that libre software advocates care about whether the binaries respect the user’s four freedoms while the Open Source advocates are concerned only about the sources being available to share and modify. It’s precisely because the Open-Source advocates don’t care about the binaries respecting software freedom that they allow malicious features in the binaries or do not release their modified versions’ sources for commercial gain. We have seen it with Tivo and Google locking up users’ devices and many companies like Sony or Nintendo taking libre software, modifying it and never contributing back.
The binaries are a major component of software and thus in order to be considered libre software they must respect user freedom. It doesn’t matter that they are licensed under a libre software license if they do not guarantee user freedom anyway.