They seem to be property with no rights, yet they also seem to have personalities, preferences, and the capacity to make independent decisions.
Are they persons, sentient beings who are capable of forming their own decisions and evolving as persons? Or do the manufacturers give them a few quirks to make them seem more personable, to increase sales?
I don't know why they have personalities. It could be that they're deliberately given them, but I'd guess that it's actually a bi-product of the advanced AI. Why? Well, C-3P0 is annoying, jittery, and cowardly (not traits you would want in your droid), and R2-D2 is headstrong and rebellious (and rude), and you *definitely* don't want a droid with those traits.
They are bought and sold with no moral problem for even the purest hero, so I'd say they're like smartphones: property. Slavery seems to be rampant in the Star Wars universe, but the heroes don't like it, so that gives us an idea of where they are, property-wise.
Socially, they were kicked out of the cantina. So some people don't like them. They're treated as friends by those closest to them, but that's probably the same way people get sentimental about, for example, a car or a guitar - amplified by the fact that you can converse with them.
Like the machines of today, they are property pure and simple to be used or discarded at will.
share They are modern sci-fi age slaves that can be disintigrated for looking cross eyed at their masters. They have free will provided they arn't wearing restraining bolts.
It's really odd that Lucas sort of introduced the face that sentient beings are regarded as property in this world, and never did anything about it.
The good guys never said anything about freeing droids, they were just much nicer masters than Jabba.
I thought he was by making the audience feel empathy for the plight of the droids. IE we were supposed to feel for R2D2 and C3PO when they got kicked out of the cantina.
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