>>What makes you think open source can catch up to and pass closed source technologies?
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>Why woudln't they be able to catch up? What does a corporation with say 2000 engineers bring to the table that can't be matched by openly available software being maintained by the entire earth.

They have money. They have resources.
Open source, I see as largely copying the features they want from closed source, not attempting to innovate new features.
Take for example the Open Source Office Applications, the greatest selling point these focus on is the ability to compare with, and even use MS Office applications. They have taken the time to recreate something that can already be purchased. Yes it is free which is good for the consumer, but at some stage the people doing this will become tired of giving all their hardwork away, and move to something where they actually get paid for their work.

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>>>simply that they have taken proprietary software about as far as it can go when the threat of open source exists.
>>What makes you think proprietary has gone as far as it can go?
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>When the threat of open source exists, keep in mind. What I mean by this is, if there was a platform (say 20, 50 years out), that was ultra reliable, ultra secure, ultra fast, and completely free, what would a proprieatary OS offer an enterprise? Why would the choose the costly solution that isn't as proven or customizable?

Support, from what I see in the OpenSource industry, they are attempting (the companies like RedHat etc) to make a profit by offering support contracts. And the price of some of these is phenominal, out weighing the cost of just buying a product that your sysadmin has enoungh knowledge to fix up.
To make something ultra secure, they will either need to completly lock down the functionality of the system. Or close the source. While ever it remains open, anyone with the time and will is able to look into the source and identify bugs, and if an OS should ever outweigh windows oin the desktop, I am sure people will start looking at breaking into it. There is not point exposing security flaws in Linux at the moment, because there arnt enough 'stupid' people who will leave their system unsecure, open all email attachments, etc.
The majority of windows viruses are still triggered by people opening the attachments.

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>>That vast majority of the desktop, pc-based servers, minis and mainframes run proprietary OSs. I don't see this changing much. Especially when nobody actually pays money for open source OS's. I have never know anyone to pay a dime for Linux. That just isn't sustainable.
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>Why isn't that sustainable? If no one owns the source, what is there to even sustain?

It has to be sustained to keep on pace with the proprietary software, otherwise it becomes out of date and useless.

I dont have anything against the principle of OpenSource, I just dont find it commercially viable. For how long are people going to be willing to write copiuos amounts of code for free. And devote enough time to keep it on track with the rest of the proprietary software.
Just look at the slow progress made by the Mozilla crew. Its taking years to get anywhere, and it is still riddled with bugs.