[TeMPOraL]

I agree with you strongly. I grew to hate the ecosystem of capitalism for the very reasons you stated.

> The whole world benefits at a cost to the company itself, though. It's not surefire either way, but the company is more likely to survive if it is selfish than if it plays charitably.

Sometimes it's a matter of choosing a business model. There are companies (Basho comes to mind) that do serious open-source work and take money for consulting/support. But I'd hazard a guess such models are only possible because IT is not competitive enough. As competition in any field gets more intense everything tends to degenerate, as those unwilling to sacrifice some value in exchange for profit get outcompeted by those who do. Governments are there to offset some of those problems with regulations, but this has a whole other set of issues.