[dedward]

Open source developers create free systems and building blocks for people to build business and other applications on top of. They lower the barrier of entry for new, money making ideas to come into the light and get a shot, rather than having the high barriers to entry that used to exist. They also force continual innovation on the commercial software front - most things widely popular and commercial software will end up with reasonable, or often better, open source counterparts in some amount of time. (This applies more to underlying building blocks than finished products - there isn't a great market for an open-source alternative to Visio or Office - yes, we have dia and openoffice and a few others, but Office is still king. The main reason is, these aren't really building blocks that lead to more things - they are just continual maintenance nightmares for their vendors. A browser, on the other hand, like firefox, was a HUGE undertaking, and was sub-standard for a long time, then it surpassed everyone, raised the bar, and caused everyone else out there to start amping up their browser strategy. If anyone falls behind in innovating and optimizing the browser as a useful, open platform, firefox will take up the slack.