I mean, this is basically what happened to commercial UNIXes, is it not? Tech behemoths decided it was more in their interests to fund the development of a free

I mean, this is basically what happened to commercial UNIXes, is it not? Tech behemoths decided it was more in their interests to fund the development of a free-software UNIX clone (the GNU/Linux ecosystem) than to keep paying Sun et al. The UNIX wars were, I'm sure, very meaningful for the participants, but ten years later it turned out there was more money to be made in building things on top of the OS than building the OS.