I don't dispute that you can live without meat
I do. http://voraciouseats.com/2010/11/19/a-vegan-no-more/ It's long and anecdotal but worth a read. The general gist of it is that she was a vegan for many years but get horribly sick because no matter what she tried she could not put together a diet that did not leave her in a state of malnutrition. Once she (very very reluctantly) started eating meat again she was back to healthy in no time.
As a species we have eaten meat for too long. Yes, Americans eat far to much meat and some people might be able to do with out it but to say that it's possible for everyone to do with out it is wrong.
An important point in that link is that she clams to have contacted other vegan bloggers and they said in private that they cheat and have meat on occasion to keep healthy. To me this is a sign that while many people brag about having not eaten meat in X years most of them are likely lying to preserve their hard earned and (in their social circles) highly respected vegan status. They put so much effort in to something they believed in only to have it thrown back in their face as impossible must be a horrible experience that they refuse to come to terms with.
plus figure some undocumented stuff out
For me that's the killer of closed source. For open source rare problems are often unfixed but well documented in blog posts that contain long strings of profanity typically ending in "I can't believe that X works like this". Closed source tends to have shaky uncertain explanations on how people think things function. Since only a hand full of people in the whole world have the access to reverse engineer the problem correctly no one really knows what is going on.
I'm ignoring the power to read the code your self because while I have needed to resort to that in the past
1) most people don't have time to
2) jumping in to another code base is typically a lengthy process and people typically don't have the time to do it for a minor bug.
Having said that. It's the ultimate "oh god I need to fix this no matter what and time is not a issue" documentation.
Kleeneness is next to Godelness.