> I suspect that all the free hobbyist FOSS labor artificially depresses dev salaries, hurting everyone else. Otherwise, the FAANGs would have to hire people to replicate what they currently get for free.
The way I see it, FOSS enables a ton of smaller entities to launch products when they would not have the capital otherwise (see: anything built on Django). Those represent a lot of jobs too! This could be the software version of the Jevons Paradox.
Megacorp are a different problem. They do contribute back to the commons, but this seems like a drop from the bucket of the quintillion dollars they represent. Is it fair? That's a moral judgement, because software being FOSS means its legal in any case.
I applaud the benchmarking though.