[jseliger]

I agree with supporting the ideals, but hitting a barrier in features and usability

You could reverse this and say that if open-source advocates would make usable products with features on par with commercial products, people would adopt them. There's a chicken-egg problem here.

People interested in these issues should read Working in Public by Eghbal, which is about open source culture and sociology. I just finished it.

[dTal]

The trouble is that the commercial products have marketing departments that aim to convince people that their feature set is the most important. So although open products have unique features of their own - including openness - people are likely to overlook them.