I agree. I've seen for a long time that making money off of free software involves providing expert technical support for installing and running the free software, not writing it. There are the obvious in-house exceptions, where you are writing custom apps for a specific purpose in a company or research unit.

Now Microsoft feels threatened by this, because their whole selling strategy is to let them do all the technical support, thus taking the burden off of your IT people. We all have seen what a mess they are creating. It's like mono-culture in a fruit orchard, if all the trees are the same, bugs and disease set it. But if the tress are varied, there is built in resistance.

There is another benefit to companies buying open source, they can save a tremendous amount of money by not getting hooked into the expensive per-seat licensing that Microsoft demands. But then again, we sit here and academically talk about what is the right thing to do, but reality steps in, and political considerations overwhelm the technical ones. Like the need to prop up Microsoft stock for pension funds, and the need for the government and corporations to spy on people, which Microsoft makes possible.