The biggest advantage of Free/OpenSource-Software is one you don’t necessarly think of :

Breaking dependancies!

Say what?!

Yes, that’s right: Coping with the inevatible obstacle of moving forward: Breaking old habits and open up for new territory.

In Microsoft-Land, everything’s tied up and interwoven,
so even the slightest change can virtually rip everything apart and the mess is to fix for MS alone.

There lies the beauty of “Adapt or die” and plays out as the biggest strength of OpenSource:
All projects (that matter) get up(dated) and running in the shortest possible time,
no matter how harsh the environment changes they live in.

Take Firefox:
The more widespread a plugin has become the more likely it is to be adapted for the newest version.

OpenSource makes it possible, even if the old code-maintainer has no interest himself,
anyone can pick up and take it to the next level.

That enables to try out and go beyond, where Windows is stuck on same-old, same-old.
KDE 4 is another example, where all things related will adapt until everything plays nicely again.

So the whole ecosystem of free software evolves and adapts (as in nature),
no matter how rough and fast the surroundings change – FLOSS is here to stay!