[ThrowawayR2]

> it was about companies giving pretty much zero recognition to OSS groups at other companies upon use of their s/w - they shouldn't be surprised when, as a result, the infrastructure they depend on rots away

Why would they care? Businesses were happy to pay these hardware companies that you deride for their devices, they're more than happy to use your library as long as it is gratis, and they'd be perfectly happy to pay other companies for replacement software if your library stopped functioning or ceased to exist.

The broad adoption of FOSS has nothing to do with ideology or community and it never did. FOSS is widely used primarily because it is gratis and frees up money to be spent on something else.

[glangdale]

Uh, so they will be perfectly happy to pay for something (not to mention change their code and go through the fun of dealing with contracts) they were previously getting for free - rather than, say, send a nice email to a private address or some relationship manager. Yes, this makes total sense.

There sure are a lot of HN folks out there who apparently understand the ins and outs of corporate OSS way better than I do. Apparently I'm a wide-eyed naif who thought that OSS was all about community, and need to be set straight by one HN cynic after another.