[jkukul]

> and other than a bit of open source (PyTorch and React are nice, I guess) as far as I can tell it's never really had any mission other than getting big.

I sometimes wonder what motivations these orgs have in contributing to open source.

My cynical side refuses to believe that the reasons are altruistic (although I'm sure there are altruistic individuals in those orgs!).

I think that the decisions to contribute to open source are calculated business decisions made to benefit the organization by:

* Getting outside contributions to the software that's widely used inside an organization

* Getting more people familiar with the software so that when they're hired they are already up to speed

* Attracting talent

* Improving PR

* Undermining competition (Llama?)

Regardless of the reasons, I think that there's a huge net benefit to society from large companies open-sourcing their software. I just don't think that's an argument to view these companies more favorably.

[xorcist]

Commoditizing your complements.

In other words, wiping out your competitor's business moats. If their cashflow is dependent on selling phones, open source your phone operating system to lower the value of the proprietary system.

It can also be used to quickly gain market share where you previously had none and wants to catch up on your competitors. You're bleeding money any way to try to pry open an established market, and open source might be the cheaper route. Most famous examples are perhaps Apple (webkit, cups) and Facebook (AI).