I think we've drifted away from your original argument.

Your original comment was making a philosophical case. It appealed to history, Locke's labor theory, and the moral authority of creators. My response addressed those claims directly.

Your latest reply, however, isn't really defending that philosophical position. It's explaining how software licensing currently works under copyright law and why software is treated differently from books or paintings.

I don't disagree with most of that. Software has long occupied a unique legal category, and EULAs have existed for decades.

But that's a different argument from the one you originally made. We've shifted from "this is the morally correct understanding of ownership" to "this is the current legal framework for software."

If your point is simply that software has historically been licensed rather than sold outright, then I don't think we're actually in much disagreement anymore.