That still costs less than the revenue brought in from a single bar regular (~$100 a week). It also probably works better and staff are more likely to be familiar with it, etc.

I'm not saying SaaS is always the right answer, but that's probably why it succeeds at that pricing.

How an alternative is pitched really does matter. It's not enough to just point out flaws with the competitor. Open source also requires its own set of incentives to get meaningful contributions. It has to solve a set of problems that are interesting and impactful to the contributors.

It sounds like an uphill battle for this project.