Are open source products as good as their commercial counterparts

Hi Friends,

I just came across this site and I was totally amazed to see that open source and free alternatives to costly and commercial software do exist and that too with a reasonable degree of efficiency at no cost at all.

http://www.itpro.co.uk/625198/top-10...e-alternatives

Credit goes to those thousands of free lance intelligent open source developers who dedicate their skills and time to explore and offer users software that they can otherwise not afford, use and enjoy.

But I have one question. For example, Gimp - the open source alternative to Adobe Photoshop and Blender to Maya/3DS Max are really so good that one can use them in a professional environment as I know nothing about open source and free software being used in offices? Thanks.

Just found some more sites listing open source alternatives....

http://www.osalt.com/

http://www.opensourcealternative.org/

http://www.openalternatives.org/site/