Linux only became a viable desktop around 2010.
Blender was open sourced in the early 2000.
StarOffice was a viable alternative to MS Office 2003.
The more things you list that are before the year(s) they used as reference points, the more you support their argument that software freedom peaked a while ago and has been going downhill in major ways in more recent years.
- Google's original Android was more open than any of the alternatives. And even if Google went on the direction of closing Android and putting functionality around its Play Services, there are a good number of alternatives that build on Android and make it completely free. The number of devices that can run LineageOS/Murena/Linux is going up, not down.
- All social media was closed, and now we are seeing an explosion of open source projects. The number of people using it is going up, not down.
- Self-hosting software is easier than ever.
I fail to see any time interval where the availability of free software has been reduced. All it takes is a motivated individual.
But they were comparing to "10 years ago. Or 20."
> What would you propose, to have Stallman pointing a gun to everyone who didn't attend a install fest?
If I can propose wild things, then I'll propose that something forces big hosting companies to share their code.
And data freedom is an important issue that has a huge overlap with software freedom. I like the EU's movement toward forcing export and interoperability for big entities.