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Hi ShadowAce, good post, very helpful list.

The criticism common to Linux "alternatives" to proprietary software will always be that the free version doesn't have this feature or that feature, or isn't compatible with the latest from the proprietary vendor.

OF COURSE! Proprietary software vendors make little money on initial sales, which are often heavily discounted. Most of their revenue comes from paid upgrades to newer versions. And how does the vendor entice existing customers to upgrade:

Add new features, sometimes providing useful functionality, but more often making the product ever more bloated or packed with confusing options.
Make a new version incompatible with older versions. As soon as a few new customers have bought it, the rest are more or less obliged to do so.
Withdraw support for older versions.

You notice that proprietary software vendors like Adobe, Microsoft, and even Apple (who is primarily a hardware vendor) utilize all three of these methods. All of the methods are perfectly legal and indeed are good business practices for forcing customers to keep current.

So it is no surprise that the free "alternatives" will always be playing catch-up. It's the nature of the beast, not some shortcoming of free software per se.

I mention this point because a lot of people complain that free software generally lags the proprietary offerings, because they fail to understand the nature of providing "alternative" software in a competitive marketplace.

Excellent point regarding the nature of software alternatives.

I, personally, have no need for the latest "feature" or version of any particular piece of software just to have the latest. If the feature seems useful, then I'll upgrade. This usually occurs during an OS upgrade--a new filesystem (usually), or faster boot system.

But with individual applications? Almost never. I accept upgrades for applications that run on my chosen platform, but I do not choose my platform based on certain features of applications that are available on multiple platforms.