[teddyh]

So substitute “Apple” with “Google, Apple, Intel, etc.” in my original dystopic vision. Should we trust them?

The technical problems with GCC’s unstable plugin API can be fixed, and is, from what I understand, not something put there intentionally.

[anon1385]

Substitute with FSF and GCC and same paranoid arguments apply. I don't have any reason to trust the FSF any more that those other organisations. At least when it comes to corporations they are just working to make money and I can reason about and predict their actions based on that. With political organisations like the FSF they are often quite prepared to shoot themselves in the foot or destroy the entire project just for ideological reasons. An "if it can't be just how we want it then nobody can have it" attitude.

Back in reality none of these projects are going anywhere. GNU zealots have spend the last 2 decades warning that BSD style licences would result in people making closed forks of things leading to the original open version dying. But it has hardly ever happened.

Instead of propagating paranoid conspiracies you should just accept the truth which is that BSD style licences have proven to be the most effective at getting people to contribute to open software.