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But it is anti-alternative. It discourages alternative ways to do things.

This is bad in the long term because alternative ways of doing things open other avenues of investigation and development.

But all we get are improved versions of hammer when everything is made out as a nail.

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OSS isn't anti-alternative at all? Just because you don't pay for the software doesn't mean there's no competition.

Even well-established software can have meaningful alternatives. Look at ripgrep. While it hasn't replaced grep as a distro default, it's still being used by folks that find it a better solution for them.

Don't you remember how hostile people were to ripgrep just because ag or find + xargs + grep existed? Or the same with meson because cmake exists and cmake because autotools exists? Or systemd or clang? It takes an unusualy stubborn person or strong corporate backing to actually create an alternative to an established open source project.

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