My purpose for writing this is the complaint of Microsoft's idealism that someday "Hardware should be free." I admit that being a hardware engineer that I'm a bit biased, but there is still an issue with non-free software.

Software should be treated as a service. Guarantees that the writer will always support the software for the existance of the software. After paying a licensing fee, the software should constantly be able to work for the end user. When it does not, the license should give certain rights for the purchaser to contact the developer to provide support. Given this limitation, software writers should charge much more for their service. Of course this cannot stay forever, there are definately reasons to stop supporting the software. At this point the writer should provide all users whatever's necessary to continue working on their software themselves, else the software, however unfunctional it may be, no longer has rights under the copyright law.

This is unless the software was granted au gratis at first, namely free software.