First of all, all open source is free or you can build it yourself, so if the product does not work you did not wasted your money because you did not bought it, you signed no contract(I know you can pay for open source and for support).

>You know what you're getting when you buy the product This is not true, even today many people go in store, browse things and buy without going and read tons of reviews and complains about the product, do you think that the majority of people that buy a printer know the crap the manufactures do related to the cartridges(it is not printed on the box)? Companies would abuse their power to make more money, I remember when a law had to be passed here in Romania so that money exchanges would print the commission rates on big letters at minimum 10 centimeters because their were abusing people and no competition or educating people fixed it. better to fix the root cause then work around with free market ideology.