GPL and economics

Hi,

I was just reading this article 
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html

quotation:
"Reality: They're doing this because IBM is becoming an IT consulting 
company. IT consulting is a complement of enterprise software. Thus IBM 
needs to commoditize enterprise software, and the best way to do this is by 
supporting open source. Lo and behold, their consulting division is winning 
big with this strategy."

I think the same applies for programmers. By commoditizing software you 
will increase the opportunity for those who tweak it or do consulting. So 
we as programmers can also win big time. Maybe even more, because as long 
as software is proprietary it will be not a commodity. In proprietary 
software only those earn who happen to be employed in one of the 
successfull software companies. If the software is a commodity, everyone 
can participate in it.

As an analogy from hardware think about Apple and PC. Only Apple can make 
money of Apple hardware, although they make more money as people from PC 
Hardware. On the other hand anyone can make money with PC hardware, 
although each company makes less money.

Roland