Inferior free substitute

An inferior free substitute can often displace a superior but non-free competitor from a market, especially an information market. For example the free GFDL Wikipedia large public wiki pseudo-encyclopedia substitutes for the editorially superior Encyclopedia Britannica and Microsoft Encarta. Google and Yahoo counts often include many hits on Wikipedia articles or any of the mirroring GFDL corpus access providers.

Some think Linux is an inferior free substitute for Microsoft Windows, and that news is an inferior free substitute for entertainment on TV.