Hello,

Let's come back to what you said and counter your arguments one by one.

"Open Source is not a movement, it's a religion"

It's neither a movement, neither a religion. It's a way of distributing software and most of the time to develop it as well. Seems less of a scary thing now, hum? Seriously, considering the thousands of people actually living from Open Source related revenues, this is more a business than a religion. And if this actually is a religion, it looks more like it's the religion of money... well adapted to an anti-communist cynic like you no?

"If you are No. 1 or No. 2 in your industry, you hate open source"

Why did Cisco used Open Source for some of its Linksys division products then (possibly forgetting at the same time some provisions of the GPL licence)? Doesn't seem that those guys hate Open Source if it can make them increase their margins. And you know what? I would do the same.
I agree though on your analysis on proprietary vendors that prefer to lock users with closed source technology (and often rubbish software). But as a user, if I know I'm gonna get a poor application, I prefer not to pay for it. And I also prefer to have the opportunity to have people... yes, people listening to me when I make some requests! Unbelievable!! I can even help them if I want (seems quite fair no?).

You're talking about "key vendors like Microsoft". You're wrong to put them altogether. Actually there's a "monopoly vendor" which keeps, I agree with you, a certain distance with Open Source. And there are the other ones, the "key vendors", which generally sponsor or will sponsor or use Open Source at one point.

"Your entire plan is to commoditize your vendor".

You're right on that. But I don't know why you don't understand that Open Source is a real driver for that. It forces vendors to move their products "up the scale", liberating more and more technology stacks as "commodities". It forces proprietary vendors to make better software, to invent and be creative instead of selling licences for an "almost inchanged" office software for 10 years. In one word, it forces them to WORK and get the focus back to the user, not the customer. So yes it is an advantage to the user. Open Source brings more competition than hidden agreements between super-giant companies or monopolistic situations. You should know that if you don't like communism, no?

From an economical point of view, Open Source is stimulating sectors of the software market that had not moved for years: better proprietary software, acceleration of the commoditisation of products... What's wrong with that?

Cheers :)