>Turns out, even quality-wise free software is often much better than non-free, closed-source software.
This is only true in the very narrow segment of 'tools for geeks by geeks', 'tools that big software companies need but don't provide a competitive edge/need to be OSS for adoption so they opensource' (Apple, Google, Microsoft) and companies that sell support for OSS (RedHat, Novell, Canonical, etc.)
As soon as you move from IT infrastructure/dev tools there is no contest between OSS and commercial packages or they only cover small a niche. Compare GIMP vs Photoshop, Blender vs Maya/3DSMax/ZBrush, Cycles/Yafaray vs VRay/Renderman/Lux, OSS CAD tools, LibreOffice vs Office, etc. They aren't in the same league most of the time in both quality and functionality supported.
This is only true in the very narrow segment of 'tools for geeks by geeks', 'tools that big software companies need but don't provide a competitive edge/need to be OSS for adoption so they opensource' (Apple, Google, Microsoft) and companies that sell support for OSS (RedHat, Novell, Canonical, etc.)
As soon as you move from IT infrastructure/dev tools there is no contest between OSS and commercial packages or they only cover small a niche. Compare GIMP vs Photoshop, Blender vs Maya/3DSMax/ZBrush, Cycles/Yafaray vs VRay/Renderman/Lux, OSS CAD tools, LibreOffice vs Office, etc. They aren't in the same league most of the time in both quality and functionality supported.