The world could always use a few more zebras. In tech, they tend to be less compelling because of the easy-come easy-go dynamics: One day you might have most of

The world could always use a few more zebras. In tech, they tend to be less compelling because of the easy-come easy-go dynamics: One day you might have most of the market, the next day the ecosystem has shifted, the market went somewhere else, and nobody buys your product. I think this, more than anything else, has pushed tech investment towards the unicorn model, since a company that aims to strangle out all competition is more free to subsequently operate at its own pace. And if you look at "big tech", past and present, the survivor companies mostly have it in their culture to pragmatically engage in monopolistic behaviors: IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Adobe, Autodesk, etc. There's a big gap between that and the Stallman-style hard "free software" position, which also drives a lot of presently used fundamental software technologies. F/OSS has ultimately had a sort of accelerationist effect on the market by raising baseline capabilities, increasing the leverage of startup companies to challenge incumbents. In some respects, F/OSS is losing because the platforms most used are also generally more locked down and black-boxed than in the past. In others, F/OSS is winning, because people will no longer pay for certain categories of software. These kinds of challenges define what the marketplace is today; verticals where a monopolistic, marketing-driven approach is bolstered by tech get a lot of press hype and VC interest, while pure engineering and social-benefit companies tend to live in the background, scraping by with a "side hustle" that funds their core mission, or if they're a little more naive, aiming to get acquired before their money runs out.