How so? Annually? Nowhere I know spends that per employee in (software) tooling.
Here's the first 2 you mention as reinforcing $2k as reasonable spend:
Art people - Photoshop creative 600/yr, and there is nothing close to it in opensource at any price. Many creatives don't need all of ps, only a piece or two, much cheaper. OS is order of $100, lasts 5 years easily. Or maybe they're doing high end video editing in DaVinci Resolve, again with nothing even close in open source, for $295, again good for many years. Some artists will use a few tools, but then again many places also have floating licenses.
Software dev: OS again $100, lasts 5 years easily. VS Pro 2019 $499, again many places keep a version about 5 years. So far we're at $120/yr for a significant amount of dev tooling. Again, some people use multiple paid for tools (say Resharper, etc.) but many don't. And again, lots of commercial tools have floating licenses to lower costs.
Care to detail an annual software spend approaching $2k for either of these fields you claim provides reinforcement for that amount being a reasonable spend? I'd be curious how you spend $2k/yr for the average developer using commercial tooling.
>the fact that in some fields there are no good open source alternatives suggests that there's room for open source alternatives to exist
Actually, it points to open source being unable to meet market demand. That there is no CAD system comparable to a professional CAD tool, despite there being CAD tools for over 60 years, and despite it being a huge market, shows that open source simply cannot compete for many markets. This is true is nearly all products except a tiny few: Linux is a good OS, a few good web stacks, thunderbird, etc. But it sucks for the vast majority of product categories used by professionals.
For CAD, basic SolidWorks is $4K, is insanely powerful, and a version easily lasts many, many years. And it has floating licenses.
>Yes, there will always be companies that mooch. I, for one, prefer to work for companies that don't.
I prefer to work for companies that apply the best tools for the job. If the tools are open source, so be it. If they're closed source, so be it.
It's fine to raise money to fund open-source, it's fine to make closed source and sell it. Offering something for free, then calling it mooching when someone uses it for free, is simply childish emotional blackmail.
