The "vast wasteland of failures" is not at all unique to OSS. Its just that when proprietary software fails, nobody really notices, because the reason it fails was because nobody noticed it and bought it.
That's one of the differences between OSS and proprietary software; OSS fails when nobody cares enough about it to continue developing it; proprietary software fails when nobody cares enough about it to use it.
That's one of the differences between OSS and proprietary software; OSS fails when nobody cares enough about it to continue developing it; proprietary software fails when nobody cares enough about it to use it.