It seems that most programmers are not even aware what Free Software is, not to mention the users.
That's just the good old corporate subversion. People don't complain about corporations ruling their lives, but that they should rule them that way rather than this way.
Open Source is hip and cool but is not taken seriously, it is used to attract free labour and for marketing, but the end-user still receives a proprietary version based on the open source code.
It's taken plenty seriously. Work for free and maybe get a job at a corporation for a pittance. They don't even mention Free Software or copyleft, because then some people will get to thinking that giving away their work and asking for nothing in return is stupid. Plenty of people have written software thinking it's not important enough for a corporation to use it and then exactly that happens, because why not save money?
How could this change?
Proselytize Free Software. This isn't addressing how the entire software world is overgrown and stupid, but I suppose that's tangential here.