I read this interesting post concerning the "Myths of Linux". While I think the article is pretty good and agree with a lot of it (some of it seemed a bit of hyperbole), one section made me sit up and think.

Discussing who is really benefited by Linx, the author states

Employees often are valued based on the cost of what they work with. The higher the cost, the easier it is to justify an employee’s salary. More important, if a product is expensive, the focus is often on the cost of the product, but if the product is free, the focus is on the cost of the employees.

I thought that was very interesting and in many ways true. As just a quick data point, for a very long time (perhaps still true today), UNIX administrators made a lot more money than Windows administrators. This was despite that fact that in the early years of Windows one could argue that the Windows gang had to do a lot more work on a per server basis than the UNIX folks did. But UNIX cost a lot, and thus justified the higher salaries. Some of that was of course due to UNIX requiring a bit more knowledge, but really, it was not enough to justify the wage descrepency when compared to work load.

So what happens when the product you support is free? The perceived value of what you do is not all that high. Or worse, it is perceived as something that can be done equally well for less money than what you are making now (see outsourcing). It was an interesting point. I haven't thought it through all the way, but does commodization of a product commoditize the people that are experts in that product?