I read a great interview with Linus Torvalds the other day. The main thrust of the interview was questioning Linus as to where the Open Source vs. Commercial Source divide is ultimately headed. Pretty interesting stuff, and well worth a read.
I have been doing some thinking about this as well recently, as I try and evangelize Open Source at EDS. My thoughts are pretty similar to where Linus is at. Open Source is going to continue to commoditize certain things like OSes, browsers, and potentially even office suites. The key for Closed Source commercial vendors is going to be to stay one step ahead of the curve, and earn their revenue by innovating. People will pay in order to be at the cutting edge, the state of the art. And companies will pay for support. Those are the two spaces that I increasingly see commercial vendors playing in.
-Andy.