There was (and still is) quite heavy competition between Free Software based solutions and proprietary ones, the reason why ours won is that it *works*. An awareness of Licensing issues is only beginning to grow, like a precious little flower, very sensilbe and shy.

This is very nice way to put it :-) I suggest you start to advocate for the ethical value of Free Software asap and do everything possible for this to become the primary reason of choice. Proprietary software can compete on every other aspects (quality, efficiency, reliability etc.). The only realm on which proprietary software will never compete is ethics (social and moral value) and taking advantage of this is building a long term asset.

I have a long term experience (started in 1988 ended around 1998) of a large french company seduced by the quality and efficiency of some Free Software. After ten years a proprietary software vendor managed to convince them that their software was better in this respect. I very much regret to have introduced Free Software in this way at the time. It was like building a house on quicksand ;-)

My 0.2 euros.