It is a tip I see often, and dishwasher manufacturers generally don't recommend it

White vinegar is a very different product: it is not a surfactant, it is an acid. It means that it doesn't help rinsing, but it can remove scale. Both can prevent white stains, but the mechanism is very different.

If it works just as well, why don't dishwasher manufacturers use acids instead of rinse aid? You can argue that white vinegar is cheap and they they prefer you use expensive detergents so that they can make profit, but they could also sell you expensive acids, so I don't think it is the reason.

So what to do with it? Personally, I still use rinse aid because it is what the manufacturer recommends, and I have no better idea. It is not a significant expense, and according to the study, not as much as a problem with household dishwashers as it is with professional dishwashers (very different machines using different products).

In places with very hard mineral deposits, one solution is to put an inline mechanism that dispenses a very small amount of citric acid into the water supply. I'd guess that, for the amount of exposure time that your dishwasher components have with vinegar, it's not a problem. Same as the above poster, I've run rinse aid and vinegar both, with very similar results.