Open source will never, by definition, create monopolists like Bill Gates who accumulate billions of dollars enforcing their "intellectual property" rights and use those billions to pay lawyers to steal the "intellectual property" of others, but it will allow people to sell their knowledge of open source software, either as employees or independent contractors, and make decent livings.
I make a tidy little living converting businesses' Excel spreadsheets into multiuser database applications using Apache webserver, MySQL database and Perl. A big plus is those businesses don't have to worry about the Business Software Alliance raping them.
do you give away your services?
excellent model! i agree whole heartedly re the BSA.
i'm always surprised at the number of small to medium sized business that are in the technological dark ages due to the fact that (a) they don't have the knowledge to do otherwise and (b) the cost of software licensing to come out of the dark ages and increase productivity is too high of a risk. and they can't afford to sink $ into (a) and (b), it is just too high of a risk that they are burning cash.
but w/oss they can afford to hire the knowledge to take them where they need to go in a very low risk manner financially.