The issue has never been about price.

OK, then what principle of capitalism are you referring to?

Property rights. The "free software" principle proclaims that software (possibly, among other things) should be "freed" from the possibility of being anyone's private property. (This also somehow gets mixed with this odd idea that software should be considered a form of "free speech".)

Free software still maintains copyright, if that's what your referring to. However, you're mixing (as is common these days) property rights and other rights (such as copyright). Specifically, you probably intended to use the confusing term "intellectual property".

Software is not a physical thing, so it's not clear who is the "owner" of the work. If you buy a book, you are the owner of the book but are not the copyright holder. In a similar fashion, if you buy (or download) some software, you are the owner of the software but are not the copyright holder. So free software does not proclaim that ownership is evil, it just states that all users should have rights that people have had throughout history when it comes to similar intstructional works such as recipies.

Also the idea that software is a form of "free speech" does not come from the free software movement. I think you're getting confused, and would recommend reading the GNU website[1] to better understand precisely what free software refers to.

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

> Free software still maintains copyright

Otherwise known as "copyleft", which means that everyone has the right to copy; it, moreover, demands that this right to copy may not be infringed upon by alteration of the software. There is no trace of the originally intended meaning of the word "copyright" in there; if anything, it's just its opposite.

Not all free software licences are copyleft licenses. While the GNU GPL is a very well known and widely used example, it is by far not the only free software licence. The Apache 2.0, MIT, BSD and other commonly used licenses are free software licenses because they provide the recipient the four essential freedoms. Copyleft is not mentioned in the free software definition[1]. It's mentioned as an optional way to license free software works.

In addition, even with copyleft every contributor has copyright over their changes. The crucial part of the copyleft hack is that it requires that distributing derived software must be done under the same license. You may choose to not distribute the software, and then the GNU GPL doesn't require you to do anything.

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

Private property in the traditional sense is certainly a critical component of capitalism, but "intellectual property" rights are something quite different.

I don't think there is a conflict between support of capitalism and criticism of intellectual "property" rights and the associated legal constructs.

Property is a system for allocating rivalrous[1] resources. Applying property to freely copyable elements makes no sense. Supporting capitalism in no way requires defending the creation of government-granted monopolies under the cover of property rights.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics)