[criley2]

>"oh but it should support X (MEGAcorp product) so I can't switch".

> It should support .docx, or whatever latest proprietary protocols. And when this is implemented, there will be a new shiny closed thing to have.

This is fascinating. The word you're looking for is "features".

Consumers want this annoying little thing called "cutting edge features".

I've literally in my entire life developing software never seen someone find a way to cast "feature seeking users" as the bad people addicted to MEGAcorp or whatever.

On the surface, your entire argument appears to be that if regular users didn't constantly want well polished and shiny new features, open source software would be successful.

[logicrook]

>This is fascinating. The word you're looking for is "features".

This is fascinating. You are confusing "features" with "interacting with closed software".

Want to take an example? Go have a look at Krita. It has so many "cutting edge features" it's impressive, and many people honestly think that it's better than Photoshop. Yet what I would even say is its biggest problem is its inability to open PS brushes. Now if you spent some time on HN, you must have read about the sheer horror that is the PSD format. So it's not just comparing the two softwares on an objective basis.

[criley2]

Hey Krita is a great case to make but I would characterize it as the "exception to the rule" not the rule of open source software.

Photoshop is a bit of a leviathan and it's odd how no one has ever really competed with it strongly and the software has certainly suffered from its lack of real competition.

There's also the reality that its primary users -- designers, photographers, digital artists and the likes, aren't usually programmers or techie people who use a large variety of complicated software, and so for its primary users, they know Photoshop like they know their Canon, they know the details of the brand and setup and change is hard for them as well.

EDIT: To corroborate this last paragraph with an anecdote, I asked a digital artist friend of mine if she'd used Krita, and her reply was: "I'm leery of open source though. like great for devianart and stuff but often find saving problems, glitches etc", so that helps demonstrate how ingrained artists can be to their tools.

Krita seems great -- but that doesn't make Ubuntu better than W10 or OSX, and it doesn't mean that LibreOffice is in the same decade as Word and/or 360 or Google Docs, etc etc.