> - OSS is valuable for decentralizing power and influence

That was the intention and hope, but I think the past twenty years has shown that it largely had the opposite effect.

Let's say I write some useful library and open source it.

Joe Small Business Owner uses it in his application. It makes his app more useful and he makes an extra $100,000 from his 1,000 users.

Meanwhile Alice Giant Corporate CEO uses it in her application. It makes her app more useful by exactly the same amount, but because she has a million users, now she's a billion dollars richer.

If you assume that open source provides additive value, then giving it to everyone freely will generally have an equalizing effect. Those with the least existing wealth will find that additive value more impactful than someone who is already rich. Giving a poor person $10,000 can change their life. Give it to Jeff Bezos and it won't even change his dinner plans.

But if you consider that open source provides multiplicative value, then giving it to everyone is effectively a force multiplier for their existing power.

In practice, it's probably somewhere between the two. But when you consider how highly iterative systems are, even a slight multiplicative effect means that over time it's mostly enriching the rich.

Seven of the ten richest people in the world got there from tech [1]. If the goal of open source was to lead to less inequality, it's clearly not working, or at least not working well enough to counter other forces trending towards inequality.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires