Comment by tga_d
5 hours ago
I don't see how that was implied? Just because someone is part of the "club" doesn't mean many other "members" can't be skeptical of their role.
In fact, it doesn't even seem difficult to simultaneously acknowledge and commend the valuable role they play, while also expressing concern over the influence they wield and how it might contrast with desires and goals of the wider community.
They are the wider community. Programmers working on behalf of corporate actors write open source code in the commons because their organizations have discovered competing on some parts of the stack isn't as viable as collaborating on parts of the stack.
I won't pretend to speak to specific numbers, but a huge amount of work and maintenance is from these programmers, or funded via the corporate actors which employ these programmers. Those actors are either on this list, or don't have a problem with this list.
What remains are the handful of truly independent contributors, which are a minority in terms of LoC (though they often have an outsized impact), and the peanut gallery.
Open source wasn't always this way, it would be a different discussion 30 years ago when independents were the only guys in town, but it is now.
I am not sure you'd be right if you see what people use vs what other companies use.