Two reasons:<p>1. If nobody uses your free software because it doesn&#x27;t interoperate with what other people use, then you&#x27;re really not accomplishing much by making your software free.<p>2. If you want to empower users, you can&#x27;t very well tell them that they aren&#x27;t allowed to use certain kinds of software just because <i>you</i> don&#x27;t want them to. That would be quite hypocritical.