News are full of shit as you noticed.
First part of it is you : you are too gullible.
Companies' secret for making a lot of bucks is stealing other people's know how and knowing how to get the money out of it.
Think of it; it is supposed to be windows the biggest market share of all operating system... On installed computer, but what about appliances, phones, and software?
Well you certainly run linux and *BSD in your house or on the other side of your internet connection ... or derivative works such as mac OS X, android, iOS (CISCO), ASA products, ubiquity, routers, most SAN, NAS, TIVO, set top box, 3ple play appliance, firewalls, PaaS, IaaS, a cloud, game server ....
Actually the market share of free software counting every devices having an operating system may well be more than 60%.
But what about the software? Until recently microsoft utilities like telnet, FTP where having the strings telling they were software under MIT/BSD licenses.
ISC DHCPd and bind has been used as the core to most DHCP/DNS servers, even the one shipped with microsoft (at least when I was a sysadmin 10 years ago). Java, foedora, debian, mysql and openoffice used to be free software with functional communities.
ffmpeg, gstreamer, mplayer, VLC, lame are embedded in so much products you would be surprised there is not a day you use a rebranded free or open source software.
And people probably compile with GCC, LLVM... or use interpreted languages such as PHP, python, bash, mono....
And you know what?
Their dysfunctional noisy offices don't help getting the work done. Their management, their marketing so prone to tell how they outbest the amateurs on the Internet are not able to compete with small and great teams that don't have offices. What is this miracle? They write articles about how they get things done, but their own size of code compared to the one they use is peanuts. It is like a kid putting the icing on a cake done by someone else bragging he did the cake, and the icing is often done poorly compared to the cake.
Probably the secret of getting work done is to not work in a company.
On the other hand not every Free project are coded with good quality, openSSL/GNUTLS code audit have been quite a concern.
Companies say just trust the holy companies, however when openSSL and GNUTLS cough most of the vendors have a hiccup.
Still they pretend to do best. Are companies product better than open source products?
Well let's check: https://www.cvedetails.com/top-50-products.php
All products that were free software and are now heavily benefiting from companies' contributions or funding are ranking as poorly as companies, and projects where funding and companies' contributions are less presents (like *BSD) are doing a better job.
So another secret is to not let a company help you too much. (Fear of infections)
I don't want to say free software is inherently better, I point that companies are doing a good job at being systematically dysfunctional.
And you pay for the security of having a serious product.
Serious on the paper, or on the web. Seriously well packaged for sure. Surely seriously sucking all the money by standing on the other's free sotware/open source shoulders.
You tell me, they hire all these great coders for a lot of money, that is kind of a fair deal, no?
Transforming fixed costs (wages) that grant you all creations of your workers in Intellectual Property that you transform in exclusive license for years is not exactly a fair deal for the creatives that are denied of usage, paternity and royalties on their own code for the same duration it is worthy. It is an unfair competition between big companies and potential entrepreneurs.
We live in a time that pretend startup is a meritocracy that enriches the entrepreneurs, while truth is they are just vultures that hardly respect the licenses and make their money by intentionally ignoring the most important right of creation: stating the names of the authors of every software they use. They just make money of having an army of lawyers minoring the contributions of others and overstating their values. Bro-grammer I call them.
Yes you can find it in small prints hidden probably near an about widget.
But if it was fairly done, no users would be able to start their device without acknowledging a 30 minutes long fastidious high speed scrolling of every authors whose code they use that don't work for the company. Every authors should be given the same exposure in time as the brand itself.
In free software coders give up on their patrimonial rights, but the moral rights of being recognized is not given up. And this right is not fairly applied.
And furthermore, don't believe any companies telling you their software are good.
Gmail is utterly crappy. 2 years ago it was still telling me RC4 was used in the cipher suites.
Google, microsoft ISP have a monopoly because they were handling mail so disfunctionnaly that small/medium actors respectful of the good use where forced to bow.
New stupid measure to prevent abuse by making correct setup of mail servers hellishly complex have been thrown as a solution resulting just in the disappearance of most small to middle scale mail servers.
Most of the problem was not in the sysadmins, it was in great corporations (especially Internet Service Providers) not respecting their duties of getting rid of spammers or securing their tools, or responding to the abuses reported to them. Complains cost human treatment, and they prefered to keep their rogue abusive customers. So small users and small companies have been forced to stop administrating their mail servers because anyway the organs of the internet supposed to make an arbitration (ICANN/IANA/LIR/RIR) in favor of the public interests never had the balls to condemn these clear violation of their own terms of use.
So well, the real news is good software exists. Just don't buy them, except from small companies that are respectful of the laws, usage and customers.
If a company does not care of its providers, workers, the ecosystem it benefits from, the public interest then why on earth do you believe they will treat you well?
If a guy loves to bully and it tells you don't worry I only bully the weak remember that one day if he does it well you will be the last weak standing.
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