Both are valid opinions, I think, but personally I tend to be more impressed by the smaller business.
At any rate, as I said, it’s a great start.
What about all of the banks, oil, retail etc. with enormous ARR? Every company relies on open source. Most do not contribute money or people to the effort. We ought to be celebrating and encouraging more of this.
I don’t have exact figures for most of these companies, of course, but I have seen many small consulting or teaching businesses contribute a lot of money to OSS (here’s one such example, I don’t know the company, just a quick look on Open Collective: https://opencollective.com/frontendmasters). That’s because they rely on the success of those software systems to continue making money, of course, but I don’t think that’s any less true for the big payers.
> What about all of the banks, oil, retail etc. with enormous ARR?
I in no way meant to single out GitHub or insinuate that what they were doing was bad, that’s why I tried to end on a high note (to emphasize yet again: _it’s a great start_). What I’m trying to say is that I hope it doesn’t stop there, for GitHub or anyone else. The incentive to do it is higher when there’s good PR coming out of it, and that is mostly true the first time around. I’m hoping that there are more incentives at play than just PR (genuinely, not in a “but I don’t think so” way).