In general, proprietary software seems to have a shorter lifespan.
Here's a snapshot on what happened to some software that I've used since around 2000 (plus/minus a few years) and what happened since then:
- Microsoft Visual Basic (no longer using) - moved to Python
- Microsoft Visual C++ (no longer using) - moved to vim/Atom, compile with gcc or intel compilers.
- Adobe Photoshop CS2 (no longer using; circumstances changed)
- Matlab 5 (no longer using) - moved to Python/Matplotlib for plotting; numerical libraries or hand-coding for number crunching.
- Netscape (no longer using) / Firefox (rarely use) - moved to Safari / Chrome / Chromium
- Microsoft Office (still using, but only occasionally; I also use Google Docs / Open Office / Apple Pages/Numbers/Keynote. Apple Mail / web-based mail / mobile-based mail has largely replaced Microsoft Outlook & Outlook Express)
- Adobe Acrobat Professional (still using, but only occasionally; I frequently use Apple's Preview, PDF Expert, and Evince as alternatives)
- Bash shell & unix commands (still using)
Software that I picked up around the 2007-2010 period (around this period open source software picked up significantly in terms of quality and/or popularity)
- Apple Aperture (rarely use anymore; circumstances changed) - deprecated
- GNU Compiler Collection, etc: gcc, gfortran, make (still using)
- OpenMPI / MPICH (still using)
- Python (still using)
- Subversion (no longer using) - replaced by Git
- Git (still using)
- VMWare Fusion (no longer using) - replaced by Virtualbox
- Virtualbox (still using)
- Apple Xcode (rarely use; circumstances changed)
Survival Scorecard - 75% survival rate for open source vs 20% survival rate for proprietary software
- Proprietary Software (20% survival rate): 2 [MS Office & Acrobat] vs 8 [VB, VC++, Photoshop, Matlab, Netscape, Aperture, VMWare, XCode]
- Open Source Software (75% survival rate): 6 [Bash, GCC, MPI, Python, Git, Virtualbox] vs 2 [Subversion]
Quality Scorecard
- proprietary is better: count=4 [e.g. Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat Pro, Photoshop, Aperture]
- open source is better or "good enough" that the proprietary equivalent (if any) isn't necessary or the cost of the proprietary equivalent is hard to justify: count=7 [e.g. Python, Matplotlib, bash, git, gcc, OpenMPI/MPICH, Virtualbox]