Re:

Thanks to those who responded. Here's my (clearly slightly biting)
response:

---
So it appears you are simply uninformed.

Given that, it is frustrating that you don't bother to do the research
yourself. Just throw some bombastic comments out there and let the "Free
Software Supporters" research and refute you if they can, right. That is
worthy of little more than slashdot. You might find a warmer reception
over there...

Short of having time to do more (of your) research, I suggest you go
read up on the following:
- OpenMFG (commercial ERP, support, a competitor company in the works)
- Production PostgreSQL deployments in the TB (Terabytes/Tibibytes),
hundreds of millions of records
-- data warehousing
-- legal calendaring
-- human resources
-- placement
-- much more
- SQL-Ledger
- GnuCash
- Freemoney
- Xiwa
- GNU Enterprise

Granted these are not as widely known as SAP (yet), they are clearly
evidence that people were looking at ERP/Accounting on OSS long before
the recent "converts" came to the scene, and in some cases there are
production deployments of these systems. This (obviously, as it
shouldn't be necessary to point out the empirically observed behaviour
of free software) will accelerate over time.

Feature-wise, PostgreSQL is now starting to push Sybase off the market
(point in time recovery, on line backups, clustering) - as in, be a
viable "full replacement". It apparently used to be 5th, just after
Sybase, but has recently started displacing Sybase more consistently,
for new deployments. There is no surprise at all that Sybase is acting
as they are. You don't gut part of your market unless you've already
lost it.

You might be a fan-boy, but don't appear to be a great friend, of Free
Software. If you want to be held in esteem as part of the community,
you'll need to raise your bar.