Open Source and Free Software is not "an alternative to $PROPRIETARY". In my opinion it's a parallel world where similar questions lead to marginally or completely different solutions to problems. Whenever you compare FOSS to proprietary things, you end up in a dependency, dictated by the proprietary vendor. That limits creativity and blocks ways to better and more interoperable solutions that share code. We should build better worlds, not open knock-offs :)
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@jwildeboer Yup. Consider the sheer number of people working on software for public offices/agencies. The proprietary model thinks in products to be sold. The open model could pick and choose modules from all over the place and have them integrated both by companies *and* state employed programmers. The focus would shift towards interfaces rather than monoliths. And that could work pretty well with open data for instance.
@jwildeboer I often explain it with food. If you don't look for 1-to-1 replacements when you eat vegetarian or vegan, there is a big, big menu of great dishes that thoroughly beat slapping a crusty fried cheesething on the plate next to the potatoes and beans. Too bad that some people will apply the same disdain to non-meat food as to non-proprietary software. We have a long way to go.