[stcredzero]

"...Free software seems to have better usability..."

Not sure about that. Dia vs. Visio? Visio wins. Maya 3D vs. Blender? Many say Maya 3D wins. GIMP vs. Photoshop? I'd say that one was really a tie with a large pool of people just used to the way Photoshop does things. OpenOffice vs. Word? OpenOffice still has lots of interface snafus compared to Word. (But AbiWord doesn't have those.)

I contend that Open Source / Free Software almost never achieves the same level of GUI polish as the best proprietary apps without someone being paid to do it. The market forces in the volunteer-only situation almost never push it to that level.

If you contend that Open/Free and Proprietary apps as a whole are around the same average level, I would generally agree. But let's be honest here: that's setting the bar way too low. Everyone should be aiming for the top few %. And when it comes to that, the Proprietary stuff has the lion's share.