I once asked at work if I could use a free PDF maker application which works as a simple generic printer driver, I have installed on my laptop Im using now and works perfect although I dont have any use for making PDFs at home.  Exactly the same application which does the same task normally costs £50 or so per licence, or a great deal more if you want the proper Adobe application, which it a lot of cases may be an overkill, when you just want to save a Word file as  a PDF, the simple printer driver job works like a dream.

Anyway I was told we use commercial applications and its not policy to use freeware ones.

It seems the ethos of free and open source applications isnt widely known in a lot of the corporate IT world.  I think managers are worried about small print in the EULA legal stuff or that there could be adware or other undesirable extras included.

Heres an idea, could the open source world have paid for packages offered for popular apps like Firefox, Open Office, Audacity, etc
The idea that you can pay a fee,  and get technical support by a trained team  (by timeframe or by a number of incidents) so you have the peace of mind you can pick up the phone and speak to a knowledgable support team, in the event that application goes wrong.

The French Police now use Firefox on every desktop, I wonder how governments deal with any support scenarios here?