There are companies making money programming open-source software right now. Red Hat , Cygnus , and Caldera are three of the best known. There are others. We don't think the triumph of open-source will doom anyone to starvation. But to understand why not, we need to take a fresh look at the economics of software and the work that programmers actually do.
Computer programs have three kinds of economic value.
They have use value , market value , and monopoly value . The use value of a program is its economic value as a tool. The market value of a program is its value as a saleable commodity. The monopoly value is the value you gain not just from having the use of a program but from having it be unavailable to your competitors. This starts with the market value and monopoly value of software going to zero because of all the free sources out there.