虽然自由／开源软件带来了种种好处，但它并不总是最合适的选择。以下是自由／开源软件需要改进的地方。

=缺乏商务应用=

虽然当今已经有许多自由／开源软件项目，但很多领域中仍然缺乏功能全面的产品，特别是在商务应用方面。最近像 SAP 和 Peoplesoft [36]这样的企业资源规划平台的移植满足了高端应用市场的需求，但中小型企业（Small and Medium Enterprise, SME）的市场还是空白。像 Quickbooks，Peachtree 和 Great Plains 这样的提供基本或提高功能的软件目前都没有自由／开源的相应同等产品。

这种情况的部分原因是缺乏对技术和商业问题都精通的人才。目前存在的大部分自由／开源软件项目都是由于开发者遇到了问题而编写软件试图解决。这些项目都非常偏向技术本身，例如开发 web 服务器，编程语言／环境和网络工具。软件开发者很少遇到像会计这样的问题，也缺乏相关的商业知识从技术上提供解决方案。

=与私有软件系统的配合=

自由／开源软件系统不能与私有软件系统完全兼容，特别是在桌面方面。对于已经在私有应用软件和数据格式上投入了大量资金的组织来说，整合自由／开源系统的尝试可能会极为昂贵。私有软件常常为了阻止其他解决方案的整合而频繁改变标准，使问题更加严重。

随着组织从私有标准转向开放标准，这个问题有望得到缓解。

=文档和“美容”=

现有的自由／开源软件缺乏商业软件中全面的文档和用户友好的界面[37]。早期自由／开源软件的开发者只注重功能，认为优异的性能比易用性更重要。

除了高质量的文档，自由／开源软件的图形用户界面（Graphical User Interface, GUI）。因为大多数自由／开源软件系统中的 GUI 元素并不统一，而是一系列不同项目的组合，因此元素的行为千差万别。不同程序的“保存”命令都不同，而不像 Mac OS X 或 Microsoft Windows 这样的系统基本统一。不同程序间的复制／粘贴可能完全不同，甚至根本无法办到。虽然为桌面统一化人们已经做了许多重要工作，在未来一段时间内桌面程序不一致的现象仍将继续存在。

For all the benefits FOSS brings, it is not suitable for every situation. There are areas where FOSS needs improvement.

Lack of business applications

While there are many FOSS projects out there today, there are still many areas that lack a full-featured product, especially in the business world. The recent porting of Enterprise Resource Planning platforms such as SAP and Peoplesofti have helped cover the high-end application market, but the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) market is still poorly served. Basic, polished accounting applications such as Quickbooks, Peachtree or Great Plains do not have FOSS equivalents at this time.

This problem has come about in part due to the scarcity of people competent in both technical and business subjects. Technical developers who encountered problems and wrote software to “scratch an itch” started most of the existing FOSS projects today. These projects are usually fairly technical in nature, such as the creation of web servers, programming languages/environments and networking tools. It is rare for a software developer to encounter accounting problems, for example, and have the business knowledge to create a technical solution.

Interoperability with proprietary systems

FOSS systems, especially on the desktop, are not completely compatible with proprietary systems. For organizations that have already invested massive amounts of capital into proprietary applications and data storage formats, attempting to integrate FOSS solutions can prove to be prohibitively expensive. Changing proprietary standards, which is often aimed at preventing the integration of alternate solutions, exacerbates this problem.

In time, as organizations shift from proprietary to open standards, this problem should be reduced.

Documentation and “polish”

Established FOSS lacks the extensive documentation and user-friendliness found in commercial softwareii. The primary focus of early FOSS developers was functionality. Creating a program that worked well was far more important than ease of use.
Besides the dearth of high-quality documentation, there are also user interface issues with FOSS Graphical User Interfaces (GUI). Because the GUI element in most FOSS systems is not a single element but a collection of different projects glued together, the behaviour of the GUI elements differ greatly. Command-to-save data differ from one program to another, quite unlike proprietary desktop operating systems such as the Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows. Cutting and pasting between different programs can be wildly inconsistent or even impossible. While there is significant ongoing work to unify the desktop, the desktop is likely to remain inconsistent for some time to come.