Not sure what "open-source upstream" means, but in software, there is the complaint that companies like Google can add a lot of complexity to software projects, which serves Google, but not the classic home user of Linux. That can make it effectively their own corporate project and drown out more casual developers.

Ironically OSM is the opposite. The hobbyist mappers do bus routes and admin boundaries and mountain trails and all manner of complex stuff. The corporate mappers are really just interested in the most basic element: drivable roads.

That much is true - direction and feature set. The accusation that seems weird is that companies would be motivated to make it proprietary just because they use it. At most, it seems like you’d get a niche for “enterprise” distributions with support contracts on the same stuff.

Oracle is the most (in)famous via various acquisitions. But IBM/RedHat/Canonical/Microsoft are a few other large players that have been trying with varying degrees of success recently related to Linux. Corporations appreciate ever increasing EPS and decreasing costs... nothing more.

MySQL springs to mind

Oracle took over MySQL as the acquirer of Sun, not as a heavy MySQL user with too much influence.

Also mysql _sold_ their governance to Sun - it wasn't _taken over_.