I get to break this out again:

        As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
                Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"
                Accompanies the Secret Project "The Planetary Datalinks"

I absolutely agree with your statement here:

Open source is not about being free, it is mostly about the sharing of information with the goal of making it better and aiding everyone.

I think the phrase "open source" has gotten overly politicized over the years and for many people is approaching the level of an "-ism." I think the shift to calling it "community driven" software (or the like) better represents the meaning and intent of most projects. Things start to go awry when the that goal gets pushed to the side in the favor of some "agenda" that has little to do with the purpose of the project itself (examples like monkeying around with license agreements come to mind) or when egos and "religious zealotry" get in the way of community communication.

From the End-User standpoint, really the only thing that they care about is that there is a "full featured" product that is free (as in beer) and they won't have to deal with marked-up license fees. Most of the time, if a company goes to a potential client and, for example, says they are going to use an Open Source CMS system, the client basically thinks "Great! My project will be cheaper because I won't have to pay additional license fees."

In all reality, I would venture that the VAST majority of open source projects in the wild that are being used VERY RARELY have that source code looked at by anyone other than the developers that are building the system or those looking to exploit it.

For most people who are more concerned with using a system than how it is built, "Open Source" just means they have to use Google for documentation instead of calling the vendor or reading a manual.