[agloeregrets]

The point I'm making is that large companies benefit on a scale much much larger than others. Facebook isn't just gaining from OSS because they can use other's repos, they are gaining because they can have others fix and build their own repos. The Gameplan is to gain from the community, not contribute. Sure, React is nice and fine for the community, great framework...but the intent is not to help the community in the first place.

[the_local_host]

As far as I know the goal of free software was never "free for those who pull their weight by contributing." It simply meant free to run, change, and distribute, without any obligations except that the right for others to do the same had to be preserved.

[villasv]

> The point I'm making is that large companies benefit on a scale much much larger than others.

They do benefit immensely, but no by having "others fix and build" their own repos. You're overestimating the source code contributions and underestimating the cost to manage a hugely popular project.

> The Gameplan is to gain from the community, not contribute.

This is just silly. The """gameplan""" is to contribute and AND grow a community, which benefits everyone. Does it benefit more the company than the community as a whole? Maybe, but that's petty reasoning.

[BlargMcLarg]

I don't necessarily agree with "The Gameplan". Yet the inverse, the idea that the majority of companies in a position to contribute to the communities they utilize, is just as much something I have yet to see. If anything, the overwhelming attitude I see in companies is "this is our secret sauce, and we don't want to let go of it because a competitor might use it and one-up us", while making liberal use of e.g. open source Unix distros and open source libraries. Confidentially clauses.

Even many companies who do eventually release parts of their secret sauce (e.g. Google, Facebook) first secure their financial and tech positions before they do so. In other words, when they do release their secret sauce, the good will they get far outweighs the risk of a competitor improving on top of their secret sauce and getting a significant chunk of their market.

[villasv]

> In other words, when they do release their secret sauce, the good will they get far outweighs the risk of a competitor improving on top of their secret sauce and getting a significant chunk of their market.

Which is completely understandable? I can't see how things would be different and I'm still pretty satisfied with the outcome of releasing "the secret sauce" after it is a bit more stable instead of going through a turbulent development (looking at you, Angular).