The OS X user has the same freedoms as the Linux user: both can modify Linux but can't modify OS X. However, the ability to modify Linux is more useful to the Linux user than to the OS X user, and the inability to modify OS X is more of a nuisance for the OS X user than for the Linux user.
I think this is much less a moral issue than the parallel cases mentioned elsewhere in the discussion, because no one owes you an OS you can modify in the same way as you're arguably owed the right to marry a partner you can love, the right to criticize the government that has power over you, or the right to find food to eat and a place to sleep, and because you can switch OS much more readily than sexual orientation, government, or level of wealth. It's for that reason that those instances are well framed as instances of inequality or even inequity in how different people are treated, whereas the differences between OS X and Linux are differences between those OSes rather than between particular people.
To whatever extent people are unable to use a different OS, those moral issues reappear and a framing in terms of inequality between people becomes more relevant. If everyone were assigned an OS at birth and forcibly prevented from using another, then this would be just like those other cases.
In that model means that man and woman have different freedoms with regards to going to the toilet.
I think it's much more practical to say that both gender can go to the toilet that corresponds to their gender than to say that men have the freedom to go to the men's toilet and woman don't have that freedom. Few woman feel discriminated for not being allowed in the men's toilet.
I was reading an argument happening in the comments of an article about Light Table switching to open source. The argument was about freedom in relation to software, and it went basically something like this:
I'm not entirely sure, but this conversation reminded me immediately of arguing about a tree falling and making a sound when nobody's around to hear.
The first persons statement uses a variable in the place that the second persons statement uses a constant.
X's freedom is [partially] a function of [X's OS].
vs
X's freedom is [partially] a function of OS_List. (where OS_List is just a list of the OSs that he could in principle modify, regardless of if he wants to or is using any of those OSs)
(Obviously OS_List is a variable as well, but with respect to each person it's relatively unchanging).
I've seen this crop up in various conversations before - one person arguing using a variable where another person is using a constant (if that's the right way to describe it).
How does one diagnose the problem with this argument, if there is a problem? Is it a similar problem to the Tree in the Forest problem? Is there a standard rationalist way to dissolve the dispute so that both parties can leave not only agreeing, but also having a high probability of being correct when they leave?