Based on the title I expected a discussion on features being designed without any concept of customer's need (feature bloat), rather than companies intentionally crippling systems for market segmentation or to be anti-competitive.<p>There are multiple cures for these issues, open source software is one of them, but basically it comes down to customers demanding something different and then using it. Open source efforts could be looked at as a competing entity that is competing on features and price (free) but lacking other things.