"Ah yes. Exactly what I was getting at. "Professional software", which means brand names and "imitations" implying that the software we use in Linux is somehow inferior."
Um, no. It usually means proprietary file types used throughout an industry rather than just by any one firm, and moving away from it is essentially suicide. For example, I work for an architect. I hate Adobe with a passion. Every three or four months, I check out the open source alternatives to the whole creative suite, and I point out that, for example, Inkscape and GIMP would pretty much allow us to dump Photoshop and stop paying £45/head/month for Creative Cloud. My boss then invariably points out that we have to work in .psd and .indd files, because everyone else in the whole construction industry will be sending those and expecting them in return, and will not be able to look at our output (or us theirs) if it arrives in any other format.
And this is just examples from one industry. Every other company I've ever worked for has had multiple examples of industry-standard software which is either Windows only, or Windows and Mac OS only. Usually, everyone hates the company which makes it but no-one can be the first one to switch because then no-one else can work with them.
It sucks, but it's very definitely a real thing, and not something that can be explained by apathy or stubborn-ness.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
