Given the horrifically low rates of voter turnout, I think it's perfectly clear that many people are okay being disenfranchised if it saves time or reduces stress. I don't see why the same wouldn't apply to software. Most people demonstrably want something that works, not something they're in charge of.
The SaaSS problem is particularly insidious at the macro scale, because services substituting for software like to embed collaboration functionality that really should be handled by separate tools (and the filesystem). The resulting network effects contribute to sucking out the oxygen from the software space, so the minority of users who like their freedoms suddenly find themselves forced to use the disenfranchising services.
However, there is something odd about the GNU argument here. They have been riding a (small) wave for a long time and fear irrelevance. They get cranky if you don’t call it GNU/Linux. They basically copied Unix tools and thinking from other people, then inserted themselves into the O/S and software world, and want to be champions of “freedoms”. Fine, fine, and fine.
But it’s also fine that people don’t care. Most don’t. Most people use Gmail (and previously Yahoo Mail) and don’t want to set up their own email via Emacs, etc.
WordPress and Ubuntu are non-SaaS software (well, mostly) and are polished and easy to use. But there are for-profit aspects of those tools, too, which is partially how and why they remain sustainable.
I know searching with AWK and other tools are amazing. Supposedly. But sorry if I own a Mac and don’t go to the command line and use RegEx in AWK (or whatever GNU tool some freedom fighter says we should always use to “own” our software). I just use the very proprietary Finder or Spotlight tools that Apple built for my operating system. And some Mac owners also use software like Alfred.
This is blatantly obvious when you look at the marketplace objectively: people want simple. People do not want to spend more time learning systems and tools, but less.
If GNU wants to stay relevant, and I think that is still possible, even as their tools are rewritten and replaced in the next decade or so, they could stand to focus on attracting customers, rather than browbeating people with their philosophies. Build a better mousetrap, and all that jazz.
That said, there is a similar dynamic at play that both drives down voter participation rates and pushes users towards proprietary software.
Citizens who elect not to vote and users who elect to use proprietary software are not making those decisions in a vacuum.
It is entirely possible to place some value on your right to vote while choosing not to do so because you’ve determined that the benefit from doing so both to you personally as well as in its ability to impact the broader system is not worth the time and energy.
Analogously, it is equally possible to place some value on open and free software while choosing to use proprietary systems for exactly the same reasons.
Lots of things in the world function in this way due to network effects and inertia, as others in this thread have explained.
For example, you might be aware that prices of goods and services are inflated by the costs associated with credit card transaction fees, while still deciding to pay with credit cards because you know that your individual decision to do so will have no impact on the price that you personally pay.
It's not that, and Free Software was never against paying for software. Taxes serve common good (at least ostensibly), and you have some say about it in democratic countries. You have little control over or insight into what proprietary software does, and in particular SaaS is a tool for disenfranchising users. The way they're done, you not only can't inspect, modify and improve the software, you also don't own your data anymore.