free vs. very expensive software?

Gustavo Duarte writes in his very interesting analysis of prices of Microsoft products in Brazil and makes a very good case (with numbers/charts to back it up) as to the reasons why MS and likely other proprietary vendors face a daunting hurdle trying to sell licensed/non-open source software in emerging markets. Simply - they are to expensive for the person on the ground to afford. It is a breeding ground for massive open source adoption, something many countries in the region, like Argentina have done recently.

It seems like in the end, the simple economics is major catalyst (something all open source companies preach i might add) for adoption of open source alternatives to nearly every licensed solution.