> name a market where open source has prevented that market from settling into “the hands of a few companies.” Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Even just staying in the field of AI, you'd typically use PyTorch in Python on a Linux machine. Without those open-source options, you may have instead been stuck paying for Windows Server and MATLAB/HALCON.

In some areas, open-source options like Git or GCC have become so ubiquitous that the market for paid proprietary options has all but vanished. Many other areas have viable open-source options (Blender, VLC, LibreOffice, Audacity, Firefox, 7-Zip, FFmpeg, Krita, KeePass, Lichess, MediaWiki, Godot, ...), alongside the proprietary options, such that users aren't stuck choosing between a few companies.

I'd claim that you benefit from the existence of the open-source alternative even if you, and most others, use proprietary software. The fact that users have an option to fall back to, and that competitors can pop up without starting everything from scratch, helps discourage existing companies from price gouging/enshittification/not innovating.

> Lots of open source hasn’t diffused control of the cloud market. If anything, it has concentrated it. With so much open source available, enterprises have needed cloud companies to help them make sense of it all.

I don't understand this argument, though cloud isn't my area so I may be missing something. I see a range of hosting options, and I'd assume the fact a company can get up and running with Xen, OpenSSH, Debian, etc. without a large prior investment in software is one contributing factor to this. Should also be easier to switch to local hosting when you're able to use the same environment/tools without licensing issues.