Not sure who the author is, but interesting points from Topyli:
“Let us see how we have needed companies that exploit our free software commons. Let us see how they have actually added not only capital for themselves, but actual use value for all of us.
In the late 1980s, before the Internet or the Linux project existed, a few guys realized that the GNU C compiler, the GDB debugger and Emacs made a pretty damn good set of developer tools, and decided to sell them to developers and support them. They listened to customers and fixed bugs, added features, and customized the tools for individual companies and users. The GNU project was not interested in doing any of this, so the users were better off paying Cygnus to do it for them. Cygnus was adding real use value to the GNU tools. Soon the company noticed that the GNU project was really slow in integrating their improvements to the official compiler tree, so they were left with no choice other than forking it. Eventually, the FSF realized that Cygnus’ version was far superior to them, and adopted it as official. Cygnus pretty much became the maintainers of the GNU C compiler.
The GNOME project was created in 1997 to create a free desktop for GNU-based systems. It succeeded because Red Hat hired developers to work on it. Red Hat got a nice desktop for themselves, and the GNU project got a free desktop. Red Hat made sure the potential use value was created.
In 2010, we are complaining when Canonical, Red Hat and Novell are leading the evolution of desktop systems, and IBM, Oracle, and others are in charge of the kernel. Why do we complain? What we are witnessing is the reconciliation of use value and exchange value. Everybody wins when commercial free software succeeds.
A couple of questions where conclusions should be
Smart companies will have to adopt free software and standardize. They will then have to compete in some genuine way that makes them special. Offering a stable operating system is not a very good business plan anymore: anyone can take GNU/Linux and offer that. Offering an awesome desktop experience is not going to work for much longer: companies like Red Hat, Novell and Canonical are working to make that point pretty much moot as well.
Looking into the future, we must consider end-users and the use values they are after even more carefully. Think about ultralight computers and mobile devices. Why do we complain if Nokia controls a device such as the N900? I have no idea. Maybe the hardware in the device is important again, and we, the free software movement, have made the software stack pretty much worthless in terms of exchange value? If so, we have more time to concentrate on more important things and place all this in to the basic category of “infrastructure” along with electricity and railroads.”