Not much is known about the reality of open source because people do not want to know. This is the biggest story of the last decade: a few major technology corp

Not much is known about the reality of open source because people do not want to know. This is the biggest story of the last decade: a few major technology corporations have banded together to give away billions of dollars of software completely for free. It is, I suspect, the greatest act of charity our planet has ever known. It's not difficult to see how virtually all of the major trends from the rise of China to the ever expanding proliferation of smartphones and IoT are being driven by this. The disconnect between the narrative around technology companies and and the reality is due to a severe cultural blindspot. It would simply never occur to most people that private companies would compete to give way most of their products. Even people who should know better don't want to admit that much of the software they consume (for absolutely zero dollars!) is provided by the same companies they love to whine about. We seem to be missing a whole new phase of capitalism happening right under our noses and there's really not enough research into it.