[heavyset_go]

WRT kneecapping, history has shown that companies will bleed the commons dry and they need to be legally strong-armed into contributing back to the free software projects they make their fortunes off of.

Virality might suit the ego, but it doesn't make for a healthy project when its primary users are parasitic.

[bigstrat2003]

> history has shown that companies will bleed the commons dry and they need to be legally strong-armed into contributing back to the free software projects they make their fortunes off of.

Software is not a scarce good. Let companies use free software without contributing back as much as they wish; it doesn't affect others in the least. There is no bleeding of the commons here, because even if companies take as much as they can without giving back, it doesn't reduce the resources available for others.

[heavyset_go]

Software is rarely finished, and development has real costs.

When that development gets silo'ed away in proprietary systems, that is potential development lost upstream. If that happens enough, upstream becomes starved and anemic, and with forks only living on in silos.

Apple, for example, has made trillions of dollars off of FreeBSD. To this day, FreeBSD still does not have a modern WiFi or Bluetooth stack.

Meanwhile, AMD, Intel, Microsoft, and even Apple, etc have full-time engineering roles and teams dedicated to upstreaming their improvements to Linux. And there are paid engineers at these companies that ensure WiFi and Bluetooth work on Linux.

[throwaway838112]

Companies do worse than bleeding of the commons: lock down weak-licensed software and lock in users and devices. It totally reduces users ability to benefit from FOSS and reduces funding for developers.