Open source is only great when it exists. For finite element analysis, there are only two generally useful open source products and neither of them has a remote

Open source is only great when it exists. For finite element analysis, there are only two generally useful open source products and neither of them has a remotely modern or easy UI. For $10,000 or so, you can get a proprietary one that's fast to use and doesn't have you hitting a brick wall when you find there's some key feature it can't do. UI is a major failure of open source - it can hardly ever achieve it, at least not well. Most of the popular open source programs have no UI at all.