For the most part, I don't disagree with you, but it's also the case that Linux has gotten many contributions from companies that decided that they were okay wi

For the most part, I don't disagree with you, but it's also the case that Linux has gotten many contributions from companies that decided that they were okay with being required to give source to customizations they redistribute. Both models work, and both models have downsides. It's also true that Linux has gotten contributions from companies like Facebook (and Netflix?) that are not redistributing Linux itself and so are not actually under any compulsion to release sources. I've seen enough cases of private contributions to BSD code not getting released, even when they're clearly not a competitive advantage anymore, that I don't think waiting it out is reliable. There's a particular vendor product we used at my last company that was based on an extension to some FreeBSD kernel code. In the next version, they switched to a userspace app, it sucked, and I'm pretty sure they never released their old kernel implementation. (In fact there are plenty of well-known cases of license-violating private contributions to GPL'd code being a pain to compel through the legal process.)