What you’re describing is a future where open source is driven and controlled solely by corporate interests, and anywhere user needs or desires or freedoms run counter to corporate interests, they go unserved by open source.
That strikes me as a highly undesirable future.
I imagine that is largely because the corporations here bring to mind faang and their ilk who use software to ensnare their users to whatever purposes they need.
But what if the corporations were of wider spectrum, more Fortune 500 and less silicon valley, whose goal is to create a good computing environment for their companies to flourish in. Then I think the scenario should seem much less dystopian.
I guess I just feel that the currency for funding open source is developer time.... you either contribute your own time or the time of developers that work for you.
I'd argue that this is one of the most undesirable futures, and we should continue fighting however we can. Both Kyle and Feross are working their asses off trying to manifest sustainable open source funding and I've got nothing but respect and solidarity.
If these creative and brilliant folks could make a decent living writing open source software that benefits the commons instead of frequently seeking out contracts to write proprietary code for a single company, then we'd all have more innovative open source software to use. Everyone wins.
What are the incentives for these companies to open source their code in this case?
My gut instinct says no. Open source development should be funded by companies paying their developers to work on and maintain open source projects.
Developers are paid because what they write provides value to a business that will utilize that code to make money. This is true or open or closed source; many companies realize you get more value out of sharing coding resources with other companies to create shared, open source projects.
This is how most open source is funded, and that isn't bad.