I really wish I could disagree with you, but you're probably right on some level. To me, WinAmp peaked with v2.78. Office peaked with v2003. Photoshop and Illustrator peaked around ~CS1 or earlier. As soon as the open-source apps catch up to those feature-sets, I'm happy and can finally stop buying (pirating) the commercial versions. But you're probably right about new (younger) users and their new expectations about what hardware/software can/should do. As far as I'm personally concerned, though, as soon as OO can copy 99% of the features in Office 2003 (close, but not quite there yet) I'll never look back. And, I've got my breath held for Inkscape, etc.

...because MS Office can't continue adding new features forever. They'll try, but eventually their software will plateau and stabilize into an Office suite that has all of the features anybody would ever want. And then it will take OO a few years to duplicate all of those features and then it'll be a real threat. OO will always be a few years behind, until MS Office stops changing.

Do things like EFF and NPR count as charity? How about paying for shareware?