> If you accept that sometimes it does sustain FOSS [..] I don't see how that point [sometimes it does not] follows. There are many different ways to achieve m

> If you accept that sometimes it does sustain FOSS [..] I don't see how that point [sometimes it does not] follows. There are many different ways to achieve market share, and these different strategies have (a) many consequences beyond merely (b) getting more paid developers. Even though (b) can help the FOSS ecosystem, in many cases (a) includes effects that harm the FOSS ecosystem, that more than offsets (b). For example, this mjg59 article talks about Canonical's trademarks. This can be argued to "increase market share" but it undermines the principles of FOSS, and prevents other developers from building on top of much of Ubuntu et al. (edit: another thing is not bothering to spend money on core infrastructure products because they're less attractive to users; OpenSSL is one famous example but there are much better pieces of software out there that deserve similar if not more levels of funding.) Another thing to consider long-term and short-term effects. Even if one big company really does FOSS genuinely well for a short time, if they capture 99% market share that is still an uncomfortable situation, because eventually there is a massive risk they will ditch the FOSS part and turn parts of their software ecosystem less free (now that everyone is locked in). The risk increases with churn as new executives are brought in, that don't care about the values of the previous executives. (edit: the risk is less with a product that is more easy to fork, e.g. software that does not used centralised services, and FOSS already carries this quality somewhat.)