> People who find that an open-source program creates more hassles than it solves don't use it.
But bad open-source software can live on to upset the productive lives of others forever, as the distribution cost is essentially free. With bad closed-source software, if the producer goes out of business (without a buyer), typically it becomes unavailable.
This is both a feature and a bug. It is definitely caveat emptor; you should do your diligence before pulling in any piece of third-party software. However, there are many, many critical systems that incorporate unmaintained open-source libraries. libxml, for example, gets a bugfix release about every year, while TeX has been asymptotically approaching version pi since 1989. That's fine; those libraries are stable, they do what they do, and I'd much rather have them available than have them disappear like closed-source alternatives.
But bad open-source software can live on to upset the productive lives of others forever, as the distribution cost is essentially free. With bad closed-source software, if the producer goes out of business (without a buyer), typically it becomes unavailable.