Pretty much all "business talk". Sure, let's synergize our portfolio by optimizing the diversification of our assets. Why not. Also the word "tart" rubs me wrong.
There's a kind of person who makes 6 or 7 digit purchasing decisions for proprietary software when an open source solution would have sufficed. Because they make stupid decisions, they need a psychological defense mechanism to feel good about their decisions. These people are stuck in the 90s and believe that proprietary software is, as a rule, of higher quality than open source software. So to them, "proprietary" signals "quality". "Proprietary Algorithm? Must be so good they need to keep it a secret!" And actually, that's true for a lot of industries. FOSS has changed web development for the better, but there's plenty of other industries that just don't have that. Just compare Octave with Matlab, or Sage with Mathematica, or Blender with Maya, etc...
Well excuse me, but you probably didn't touch Blender in forever. Having experience with all four main 3d modelling and animation suites (Blender, Daz Studio, 3DS Max and Maya), Blender is a serious contender (if not being slighly better than) for any of the other three. The learning curve is steep, but anything any other 3D software can do Blender can do natively - Maya and 3DS require plugins for physics, IIRC, and only 3DS has a game engine plugin.
It's true, I don't have any significant personal experience with 3D modeling or animation. I think my point stands, though: It took a LONG time for Blender to catch up (exceed?) the proprietary alternatives, and it's certainly not going to see widespread adoption in industry for a long time more, if ever.
And it took a long time for LibreOffice to match Excel. And for LMMS to match FL Studio's capacities. And for Linux distros to become as user-friendly as Windows. Corporation-side, sure, it'll most likely take the retirement/death of the Baby Boomers for that to change. But it's already changing in the public, though.
Yeah. You still DO have to find instrument samples (the base ones are, as expected, not that great), but the beat and synth parts are just as developed as FL's. Still a little bit harder to learn, and your result will sound a little bit midi-ish if you don't entirely know what you're doing, but I consider LMMS to be professional-grade now.
...That is a good ass point. I think back when nothing was expected to be compatible with anything else, 'Proprietary' would mean more 'Works with our other shit, or is somehow guaranteed' rather than 'Only works the stuff we tell you it can work with.'