Nearly three years ago, my company had no Macs. When I joined, I insisted on getting a Mac, and for nearly a year I was the lone Mac user within our small company.

Two-and-a-half years later, we've grown nearly tenfold, and 70 percent of the company uses Macs. Nearly all new employees choose a Mac, and even those who stay with their comfortable Windows box (ThinkPads, mostly), within a year they are asking to swap out for a Mac, too.

Macs are contagious. But they are much more so now that Apple has given its advocates convenient ways to "sell" the Apple experience.

That's the right way to think about software: From the customer's perspective.

Open source is now the world's largest software industry....You measure it in the savings people are making in licence fees....Licence fees don't add any value to the product and are purely a transfer of wealth from consumers to software vendors.

Subscription-based business models are ideal for customers because they focus the vendor on delivering constant, consistent value. License-based businesses? Not so much.

As a case in point, Alfresco (Disclosure: I work for Alfresco) just closed a deal with a large US federal agency. The project is worth over $50 million, with Alfresco at the core. But if all of that $50 million were going into my pocket it would be a success for Alfresco and a failure for the customer. Why?

For those in the commercial open-source world (and that's most everyone now), we need to focus on finding ways to draw more people into the cash/code bargain without sacrificing the benefits that derive from fee-free adoption of open source.

Shocking, isn't it? The vast majority of the world would look at that statement and shrug. "The community?" Well, it's apparently a shocking thought to want to find ways to sell more of what one produces. Tarus went on a rampage, discrediting everything in his path...except my argument, which he conveniently overlooked. Dana called it "dumb[]." Benjamin Reed inexplicably calls my post "sensationalist," as if I have something to gain from denigrating open source (??? Benjamin, I work for a 100 percent open-source company - any money from CNET is peanuts compared to my day job).

Guys: Are we reading the same post? I really think you didn't read a single word in my post beyond "free rider." Go back and re-read it. Seriously. I don't think it says what you think it says. I'm honestly bewildered by the responses. They don't seem to comport to the reality of what I wrote.

This sounds a bit like Trolltech's early efforts to get commercial users to pay while leaving non-commercial users free to use the software without paying, but it's not. Trolltech's maligned model wasn't open source, as it discriminates against a class of user (the commercial user).

In Tenable's case, the code is free, but the information that flows through it (Up-to-date vulnerability information, for example) is not:

We're going with open source and Web 2.0-type ...

Last night Marriott was kind enough to upgrade me to a junior suite. I say "kind enough" but perhaps it was my due: I stay in Marriott-branded hotels over 75 nights each year. While I never pay for this level of room, Marriott occasionally rewards my loyalty with an expensive room type.

The same is true of Delta, on which I fly 125,000-plus miles each year. On domestic flights I nearly always get upgraded to first class, without ever paying for first class. I pay in "loyalty equity."

Open source is a bit the same. There are some who pay for the "full-price rooms/seats," while others pay by sticking with a project for a long time, devoting either small amounts of cash or code. Marten Mickos talks a bit about this when he refers to those who have more time than money (me sitting on the plane for 125,000-plus miles each year) and those who have more money than time (those that buy their seats in first class).

But what do we do about the majority of people in open source who neither contribute cash, code, or anything other than taking up a seat/room?