Sadly FOSS tends to suffer from an effect that isn't quite a tragedy of the commons but feels related. If everyone who stood to benefit from a good FOSS solutio

Sadly FOSS tends to suffer from an effect that isn't quite a tragedy of the commons but feels related. If everyone who stood to benefit from a good FOSS solution in a given problem space did invest a fraction of what they currently give to extremely profitable commercial entities for the proprietary equivalent then almost everyone (not the over-greedy corporations) could be better off. But many of these dominant software products are defended by powerful lock-in and networking effects that create very high barriers to entry for would-be competitors. In cases where there can be "good enough" solutions that can be achieved with more modest resources and then grow after gaining some traction we have seen some success stories. But for a lot of professional software in specialised markets it's almost an all-or-nothing proposition and that defeats the incremental adoption that has been somewhat successful elsewhere. Even well-capitalised commercial competitors have failed to make dents in the market share of the established giants in some of these industries and the odds are stacked even more heavily against any FOSS effort building up from the grassroots.