Free and Open Source Software is superior to proprietary software.

OK, this debate really needs context. A long time ago, computers were developed, primarily by the military and universities. These institutions were research-focused. Programs were free and although technically copyright was infringed all the time, nobody cared because there was no profit in it. Then several companies, notably Apple, decided these innovations should be available to businesses. Many companies installed large mainframes with very specialized software pre-installed. Nobody sued for antitrust because there were no software companies, only the universities produced software. Then some university students decided to SELL better software, spearheaded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates (MSoft). This worked because neither Apple nor the universities had any incentive to produce good software until that point - they earnt no additional revenue for doing so. So Apple and universities began to charge a small fee for their software. It's like with book authors - with no profit in it, why write good books? Of course, nobody could see the source of this software, as otherwise there would be no more profits. Then MSoft made an operating system - win. Win had some internet browsing software called IE pre-installed. Nobody liked IE, but it was a pain to remove. MSoft was clearly attempting to block off competition, and had to pay billions of dollars to their competitors. Without competition, there is again no incentive to make better software. Then some IP lawyers in America came up with the idea of creative commons. This made making free software legally a lot easier. Lots of people went out and created free software. Other free software became hip, like using Mozilla over IE. All this time Mozilla thrived because IE had a team behind it whom the open source community were trying to beat - and of course, they did. GIMP likewise thrived as it beat Adobe. OpenOffice beat MSoft Office. But without a single market leader to beat, the open source projects failed. There is no market leader in PC games, so there have been no truly successful open-source games. There is no market leader in video production, so video production open source software has failed miserably. We need competition to produce good software. Without money there is nothing to compete for. Yes, you can modify, redesign or reprogramme this open source software - if you are sufficiently nerdy - but the fact is most are not, and most will not go through the hassle if they get no reward from it. A few will, and that's very sweet of them, but these are the minority - not enough to drive innovation. Likewise for support. Most support for FOSS is via online forums, which few older people visit. Nobody in the community has any specific reason to help you out with your concern, unlike the company you have specifically paid to provide you with good ongoing support. There are also far more good books for paid than non-paid programs, and for good reason. Cost is not usually prohibitive to software availability, and where it is, there are usually discounts offered by these larger companies. Notably MSoft offers discounts to Africa, Arabia, some of Asia and students. Portability is true for all software, and again it's actually easier to port when you have an incentive to do so. Look at Adobe or Microsoft for instance, as most of their products run on both Apple and Win computers - plus most runs under Linux with Wine. So, I have given you some context, rebutted my opponent, and given you argument one of three: that without competition, FOSS fails.