[gf000]

Yeah, the funny thing that Linux being open-source is absolutely in line with capitalism. Just look at the list of maintainers - they are almost all paid employees of gigacorps.

It is just an optimization that makes sense -- writing an OS that is compatible with all sorts of hardware is hard, let alone one that is performant, checked for vulnerabilities, etc.

Why would each gigacorp waste a bunch of money on developing their own, when they could just spend a tiny bit to improve a specific area they deeply care about, and benefit from all the other changes financed by other companies.

[m4rtink]

And the GPL makes it all work - as no single gigacorp can just take the whole and legally run with it for their gain, like they could if it was say MIT or BSD licensed.

So you have direct competitors all contributing to a common project in harmony.

[gf000]

Well, GPL is good but I think this setup would still be a local optimum for gigacorps, were it MIT or so. They are using plenty of MIT libraries, e.g. Harfbuzz.

It would just simply not make sense for them to let other companies' improvements go out of the window, unless they can directly monetize it. So it doesn't apply to every project, but especially these low-lying ones would be safe even without any sensible license.