Too busy working my professional day job to reply right now...Gotta get back to using an open source 3D animation package to deliver a project while I ponder the demise of open source software.
The reason I had the time to blog about it is that Microsoft Word's control revision system is simple enough that I got my job done way before deadlines. As much as I love TeX typesetting, that would NEVER happen in a LaTeX+CVS/Subversion/darcs/git environment.I'd be still struggling the "quantum theory of patches".
Perhaps folks just think differently about software usage.
Microsoft Word's UI is sometimes counterintuitive, but it's simple enough that people outside the hacker community can use it.
One problem with open source I didn't point out because the main idea was to focus on de Landa is that too many people thought competing with Microsoft had much to do with compatibility. If there was a working environment for collaborative writing as usable as Microsoft Word people would eventually go for it because it's cheaper.
I know, I know. I actually wrote my undergrad thesis on compatibility issues in software competition and how Apple was attempting a "partial compatibility strategy" by adopting Unix while keeping Macintoshness. But with time I realized that wasn't really the core problem, it was just a road bump.
I think there are actually two "problems" going on at the same time. On one hand, open source software is "too difficult" for most people to use. I agree. But on the other hand, most people aren't putting that much effort into learning the software.
Is software supposed to be easy to use? As much as possible, I would think. But some "hacker" software that has a tremendous initial learning curve (TeX, Emacs, even Lisp, depending on your background) offers equally tremendous rewards over similar software that is easier to learn.
The reason, perhaps, is that in learning TeX, you are learning how to prepare documents at a more abstract level than Microsoft Word. The resulting documents may be largely identical, but TeX offers the user more power and control in exchange for taking the time to learn how to operate it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if your job is to prepare documents. It may be a totally awful thing if you only need to prepare an occasional document, as the benefits of TeX are not likely to be worth the effort required to learn it for you.
The cost-benefit equation just doesn't work for "hacker software" as you say it. We're busy doing econometrics (we do use GNU R, but Matlab, Stata and SAS are far superior for most work) and statistical work, and just need to get reports done. We're trying to make money in here, not join a religion.
It's only human. I was a Haskell religious nut for a while. (Then I stopped programming and changed hobbies to skateboarding. But I'm studying modal logic from Konyndyk, so I'm still in the Haskell-ish geekspace).
Blender of course has been open-source for years now and is being improved, but note that it too was proprietary software prior to being open-sourced.
UI is a tricky thing, especially in graphics applications, where once you're used to one application, the others feel wrong. And especially in 3D applications, where there's no standardization -- look at Max and Maya, both now from the same company, or look at ZBrush, whose interface is equal parts brilliance and lunacy (although version 3 is much improved).
This is not merely an open-source vs. proprietary thing; Blender's interface was at least as bad when it was a proprietary product. Wings3D, on the other hand, has one of my favorite interfaces. It's open source, but its interface is inspired by Nendo, a defunct commercial product.