“Why stop at software? Why not have everyone give away the product of their work for free?”
The companies that have adopted an open source model are frequently very successful selling premium consulting and support. They aren’t forcing anyone to contribute.
I, myself, will not touch anything that carries the GNU General Public License—too dangerous. But most of the sensible open source software uses the lesser public license and it is pretty easy to work with.
I get a bit nervous when I see contributors from former soviet bloc countries. I would like to give VNC a spin but I’m afraid of what it migh contain. I wonder how many elance and other job-bid sites are exposing themselves to backdoors because they hired the lowest bidder.