The way people typically do this is by VCing their configurations in a "dotfiles" repository. New machine? Pull your dotfiles, and create the symlinks in your homedir.
The authors of proprietary software control what you do with that software.
Quite clearly Free Software as a source of income works. Sell the support for the software which you have written, software you will be most familiar with. This is the model for countless companies writing Free Software.
People are malicious (I enjoy your cynicism, BTW). The difference between proprietary software and free software is that you're free to find those malicious "features" (mind the quotes) by reading the code that is available to you under Free Software. If you can't find it (the evil - not the code), you can assume that the massive community will (eventually). This is impossible in proprietary software. You don't control the software - it controls you.