Many open source advocates like Miguel a decade ago have really been motivated by two things: Their love for Open source as a concept; and their love for Unix.

Many open source advocates like Miguel a decade ago have really been motivated by two things: Their love for Open source as a concept; and their love for Unix. This particularly shows in Miguels great essay "Let's make Unix not suck". And the Mac achieves 2/3 of that. It made Unix not suck. It provides most of the open source goodies on top (using something like brew). And it also provides the kind of proprietary software that simply can't be matched by available open source software (like most of the Adobe tools). Although I can sense some bitterness in his recent essays, he simply acknowledges the fact that the classic Linux desktop won't make it. (However I think it may actually succeed even on the desktop in the form of something Android related.) As I see it, there will be a peaceful coexistence of proprietary and free software. Free software succeeds a) where collaboration is needed (Webkit) and b) to provide the kind of pluggable modules that OO programming promised to deliver but never did. Just think of all the stuff on github that you probably pull into your projects all the time.