Definitely not the most extraordinary story over the last decade.

And trumped by IBM's famous first $1b spend on 'Linux' just shy of twenty years ago, and their subsequent announcement that they'd recouped that money within a year.

Coincidentally this speaks to your claim:

> This is likely the greatest act of charity the planet has ever known.

These guys aren't in it for the charity. There's doubtless plenty of positive PR spin from contributing to free software -- but don't mistake pragmatism or happenstance for altruism.

And IBM's contribution was, frankly, marketing. It does not compare to the volumes of high quality technology that the companies I mentioned have simply given away for free.

Many on HN and others are perhaps too close to it but I think people will look back upon this extraordinary corporate charity as a decisive event of the century.

I think you're being overly charitable to think these tech corporations had charitable intentions when they contributed resources to tech projects that happened to improve their tech business prospects.

> And IBM's contribution was, frankly, marketing. It does not compare to the volumes of high quality technology that the companies I mentioned have simply given away for free.

Bizarre you didn't mention that up front when you named 'the big five contributors'.

On what do you base your bold claim that IBM's contribution was marketing, and the other corporations weren't?

> Many on HN and others are perhaps too close to it but I think people will look back upon this extraordinary corporate charity as a decisive event of the century.

IBM announced their first billion spend last century.