While I appreciate your general point, I disagree with the notion that companies have a vested interest in protecting a language, tool or framework only once it

While I appreciate your general point, I disagree with the notion that companies have a vested interest in protecting a language, tool or framework only once it has attracted a critical mass of developers. Other factors signal a company's commitment. Case in point: your comment about Dart. A few weeks ago I and two of the engineers who helped develop Dart gave talks at Google about the future of Angular / Dart. It's public knowledge -- yet many people don't know -- that Google is also using AngularDart for large internal projects. Though the technologies still have relatively small user bases, Google has devoted considerable time, money and manpower to building software with AngularDart and to making it accessible to external developers. For example, my talk was part of an initiative called FlightSchool that provides comprehensive tutorials, workshops and other resources. Having said that, I wouldn't argue that a large user base is the most important signal of mutual support and leverage in the relationship between engineers and software companies.