I'm not sure what you're hearing is "we can't do it without corporations" so much as it is "the ones sponsored by corporations are better." I mean, GIMP exists

I'm not sure what you're hearing is "we can't do it without corporations" so much as it is "the ones sponsored by corporations are better." I mean, GIMP exists, but any one of a half-dozen commercial products built by fewer people in less time are easier to use and have better feature lists. It's not that it's not possible for GIMP to be best-in-class, it's that it isn't best-in-class. (And sure, dear reader, GIMP works perfectly well for you. Great!) Given more time, I'd love to explore the idea that "most of the corporations were built on free languages and ecosystems" given how many of the companies we're talking about today seem to have some roots in C, developed under corporate control. But definitions are everything in a statement like that, so it probably would take a lot of time to sift through and ultimately convince nobody either way.