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They don't; they have good products and tell a compelling story.

There are plenty of good products that people probably wouldn't pay for these days: web servers, unix-like OS's, and scripting languages; just to name a few. Once upon a time, companies made a lot of money selling Unixes, and for a period of time, there were commercial web servers.

You are crazy. Clorox still has more end-consumer market share than all store brand bleaches put together, even though it is chemically the same stuff and costs way more.

Yes, but Clorox isn't a commercial Unix, unless it was one of the less widely known ones, either...

The point is that you can do that kind of thing in that market sector. Can you in IT? Maybe, but certainly not in some areas. The economics and marketing are quite different.

and for a period of time, there were commercial web servers

That period of time includes the present.

companies made a lot of money selling Unixes

They still do, with Apple being the most obvious.

That is not what he meant because if OS X were just a traditional Unix-alike with traditional Unix-like GUI software consumers would not buy Macs.

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