EndNote and Other Antiquated, Specialized Software

For my workstudy at George Mason I am using a piece of software called EndNote which I found to be emblematic of antiquated, specialized software.  While not always true it tends to have the following traits:

1. Expensive
2. Deal-breaker because it has some feature(s) that some niche needs.
3. Poorly laid out GUI.
4. Feature bloat with functions laid out all over the place.  Give you the feeling that functionality was shoehorned into the program with each upgrade.
5. Seems as if it is the standard in its niche; see "Deal-breaker" above.

The funny thing is I just saw a listing on Slashdot that the Center for History and New Media School in George Mason is being sued for reverse engineering EndNote and introducing it as an open source, free, and much easier to use plugin for Firefox entitled Zotero .