Virtually every tech startup or company makes use of open source at every level. We all benefit.
There’s no need to be cynical because big companies are also benefiting.
On several occasions, I've found a bug and suggested that I spend time going to the framework source or whatever to fix it. I have never been allowed to do it, we've always just worked around it. There has been no concept of giving back.
I suppose Facebook et al are probably better in that respect.
The world for sure didn't need Go, yet we got it, and it's gaining mindshare versus stuff like C/C++/Python/Perl/PHP/Ruby/OCaml/... (I'm not including Java and C# as those are also enterprise languages).
Angular, React, same story.
Sometimes it's good, but with stuff like Dart you can definitely feel thatsome Googlers are bored and desperately want to own their language instead of contributing to a pre-existing language.
Reason vs OCaml, etc. there are a ton of examples.
Basically big companies can afford to throw a ton of money into their own open source projects, basically depriving true community open source projects of the attention/oxygen they need.
There are pluses and minuses to this... But we should definitely start pushing back when the open source project is a clear open source "land grab" (for example to me Dart definitely falls into this category).
Though the main problem is in companies expecting too much from their employees (see: "looking for starter with 5 years of experience in framework X Y Z, language A B C and preferably knows devops front to back"), it is somewhat naïve to expect a passive force can only be beneficial to everyone while the majority power is still in hands of employers and employees are too decentralized and unorganized to fight it.
It's in much the same way if I were recruiting for an auto mechanic for a repair shop, a body shop, or a race team: someone who had their own custom car is probably a better bet for me than someone who is otherwise identical on paper but drives a stock Toyota Camry. I'll absolutely hire the qualified driver of the Camry, but I'll prefer the driver of the '65 Candy Apple Red Mustang that they restored and painted in their garage.
They do benefit immensely, but no by having "others fix and build" their own repos. You're overestimating the source code contributions and underestimating the cost to manage a hugely popular project.
> The Gameplan is to gain from the community, not contribute.
This is just silly. The """gameplan""" is to contribute and AND grow a community, which benefits everyone. Does it benefit more the company than the community as a whole? Maybe, but that's petty reasoning.
Even many companies who do eventually release parts of their secret sauce (e.g. Google, Facebook) first secure their financial and tech positions before they do so. In other words, when they do release their secret sauce, the good will they get far outweighs the risk of a competitor improving on top of their secret sauce and getting a significant chunk of their market.
Which is completely understandable? I can't see how things would be different and I'm still pretty satisfied with the outcome of releasing "the secret sauce" after it is a bit more stable instead of going through a turbulent development (looking at you, Angular).