>> FOSS products will not become mainstream because they don't have the funds to create a polished product that will become trusted among users that have the ab

>> FOSS products will not become mainstream because they don't have the funds to create a polished product that will become trusted among users that have the ability and desire to pay. The debate about whether software should be FOSS or not has been on-going at least since at least the 1970s, perhaps earlier: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-history.en.html https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-history.en.html And yet FOSS software continues to be used and developed and has grown tremendously in market share ever since the GNU userland and compilers were paired with the Linux kernel. There are probably more computers running the Linux kernel than not, especially when you consider servers, smartphones, and embedded devices. >> They want a functional product that looks good and is easy to use. FOSS products often fall short of at least one of these three metrics. That depends on what the software is doing. There are many FOSS products available that are very mature and capable such as Blender for 3D graphics, Octave and SciPy for scientific computing, Godot for creating games, and many options for machine learning, and many other areas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open-source_software_packages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open-source_s... Most software has minimal or no graphical user interface, so "looks good" doesn't apply much. For example, how would a web server or database engine "look good"? >> Am I saying things people have already debated into the ground? Yes. Software is unique because it can be copied infinitely and not suffer from scarcity problems: you can make all the copies you want and it does not run out. Software is also idea-based and does not degrade over time the way that manufactured products do. COBOL and FORTRAN software written decades ago still runs in banking and scientific applications today.