It only has a stranglehold on you, if you or your employer let it.
Personally, I did the hard switch from MS one day in grad school, in a lab where we had to meet with companies on an almost daily basis, but many students disliked how a particular software company behaved. (Besides company practices, the reps I saw in lab meetings and demos/posters did this weird interrogating ideas-stealing, unlike any other reps.) Knowing this, the PI told my research group that nobody had to meet with this particular company if they didn't want to, "...but don't you dare use their software."
Challenge accepted. I installed Linux, made a Web page for other people in my lab to do the same ("https://www.neilvandyke.org/lab-linux-1999/"), and was very quickly glad to be free of that company.
(I also volunteered to be the one to meet with the tobacco-involved conglomerate company, which was the other company that many students didn't like, since I wanted to still be seen as a team player, and it was the lesser of two evils, from my perspective thinking about the future of information/computation/communication.)