I agree with your general point. We don't value time savings enough. However, I'd offer a few observations. A lathe does what a lathe does every time. Even if

I agree with your general point. We don't value time savings enough. However, I'd offer a few observations. A lathe does what a lathe does every time. Even if the company goes out of business, there will be parts available for it for a while. No one at the lathe company can decide that it will stop performing feature X because it isn't popular or make enough money. This leads into the second point. Companies (and individuals) have become fearful of external dependencies. So they push for FOSS so that they can avoid lock-in. Or they adopt an "invent here" mentality. Look at how many technology projects Google has cancelled despite the fact that they have infinite money.