The problem is mostly a lack of competition in specific fields. And the companies that own the monopoly in their respective niches make it so that any form of competition is either…
immediately acquired and killed
handicapped by market dependencies on pantented features
unable to generate business because customer processes are completely dependant on proprietary solutions
Most of these applications have codebases that are FUCKING ANCIENT. Let’s take a look at Solidworks for example, which is the industry standard for Computer Aided Design for the manufacturing industry. Under the hood, it’s still the same software from the 1990’s. And there is no incentive for Dassault Systemes to rewrite the codebase.
Lots of these giant monopolistic software products have turned into frankenstein-esque monstrosities over the years. I often tell people they are built like backyard playhouses that have been expanded over the years by building an extra story on top, adding a swingset, adding a slide, extending the roof and attaching a rope ladder to the side.
All of this makes for more functionality, but they haven’t really thought about the structural integrity of the original playhouse. In a direct parallel many of these programs have unmaintainable code that no one dares touch because “hey it works, and we need to keep it that way because if we break it we’re no longer getting payed”.
These companies unintentionally hold their businessmodel hostage by choosing profits over innovation and investment in an adaptable codebase.
Which is why it is near impossible for them to support technologies that are different from their original install base. And this is also why they have incentives to make sure they stay in the lead becuase they know damn well that open source movements that get some support and take flight are dangerous to their market share, and by extension their profits.
Blender is probably one of the best examples of what good open source software will do to an industry. The day someone develops a parametric CAD solution that’s platform agnostic and based on open standards we’ll see a lot of engineers ditch Windows for Linux.