Lots of 'alternative' FOSS solutions - e.g. in sound and video compression - have ripped off a lot of costly development work done by commercial companies, repackaged it and made a few cosmetic changes to make it appear as their own development, and tried to sell it to the world. There certainly are cases where FOSS people have managed to create very good software. One prominent example: The LAME encoder started as a mediocre, simplistic MP3 encoder, its quality was far behind commercial ones. But licensing fees for commercial versions were so horrible that a lot of users rather put resources into improving LAME, and it gradually improved to a level where it became the standard that other MP3 encoders were measured up against. -- But that was after several competing FOSS formats built on the same basic principles as MP3 had failed in the market. "If you can't beat them, join them". On the desktop user interface side, FOSS guys have 'always' let other companies do expensive, lengthy usability studies. Then FOSS comes lurking behind to pick up the conclusion from the commercial studies. Smartphone UI is different - but can hardly be said to be developed by FOSS guys, even though there are lots of free apps. (Not that often open source, though.)