Commercial vs. open source software

Elliotte Rusty Harold managed to sum up in four sentences what I've been trying to articulate for years—why I tend to use open source software in preference to commecial software:

I don't mind paying for software, but if a company expects me to buy their product instead of using a free-beer or open source alternative, they MUST provide significantly better support than I can get from a Usenet newsgroup. In most cases... the quality difference between the payware products and and the free-beer and open source alternatives has dwindled to next to nothing. Almost the only differentiator a software company can add to justify their product is excellent support. When software companies cut their costs by limiting support, I cut my costs by not buying their products.