... However Usually It Does.

I just got inspired by comment of Davide San that Mathematica and MatLab are much superior to any open source or free tools. Recently more and more I get this feeling for all kinds of open source tools. It usually applies to big projects. The bigger project the more sure that it will really suck compared to paid counter part. I do not really say that the tools should be paid only because then they will be good. I personally use a lot of open source or free products and I am very happy with them. However when it comes to corporate level, it is harder and harder to accept compromises caused by open source.

Let's see for a while in different ranges of applications:

Bitmap graphics:

Gimp sucks compared to Photoshop. Gimp color management is one big hell. Try to be a photographer and do things without decent color management. Good luck...

Vector graphics:

Adobe Illustrator or even CorelDRAW are superior to anything open source. Inkscape is not bad. But it's going nowhere. Xara has been recently released as open source, but I have not seen it yet and I am not sure what stage it is. I believe Xara lost many years ago anyway.

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