For me, the Parse story, albeit I never knew it in depth, or intimately or even directly as a user, is the best summary I can find, is where OSS fails: the huge blind spot of freedom when it comes to hosted solutions, where the OSS licenses fail to apply. In extremis, this has created the precise opposite of a rich commons, for giants such as Google would not likely exist, if they were required to release their code if providing a service was considered strictly to be "publishing" the OSS licensed software in a modified form.

It has allowed, for instance, a strong supporting argument to use Azure, where we have desired cloud delivery, certainly over a number of smaller cloud service providers that could have contended. In any event, wherever we have found need for supporting tools or deployment tools, or any instrumenting facility, our decisions have gone against any small independent or startup supplier who value add atop OSS, at least in any critical code paths.

I should add, in my Dictator For A Day fantasy, I would also write into copyright law, a requirement that all defunct companies incapable of discharging in full their tax obligations, become required to deposit their source repositories as public domain articles. I don't know what the US equivalent is, but in the UK, defunct company works become copyright the Treasury Solicitor, i.e. Crown property, which the Treasury Solicitor may then express no interest in, subsequently letting the copyright ostensibly (bar pre-existing, prior, claim) to pass into public domain. So, in a obscure and narrow sense, my wish does actually exist, in one jurisdiction, for some rare cases, including one I pursued.

I fear, as intrasight notes, very much indeed fear that there are dangerous factors in the way dependencies are introduced, how users, nay whole startups are enticed (if not lured) into relying upon "ZeroSLA" circumstances, which are the antithesis of the objectives espoused by the open source founding progenitors and movement generally. The ominous prospect of being "fired" as a client and customer, ultimately at the pure fiat of "benevolent giants" possessed of fathomless resources from which mere mortals pray for beneficence, seems to be not a science fiction future, but the dystopia of the present. As recent stories, including that about GitLab, but also comment abroad about FB's code practice, and a apparent generational disconnect from past established (and even vilified) "enterprise values" increasingly reveal, it is insufficient to simply blame even severe mistakes, on young highly intelligent management, for there appears to have swept across the programming world, a cultural lack in oversight, that is becoming a measurable, real, present, risk. It isn't a subject I like to contemplate much, because it is so hard to suggest positive, immediately actionable, clear insight or values that apply, except by applying such in immediate practice, wherever one can, and even so "enterprise culture" is also values, and in a cultural mismatch, such things are incredibly hard to argue effectively, when a complicated balance has to be struck. Certainly, this is far harder, than it was twenty years ago, when one felt it possible to align with one or another of the fresh, youthful, enervating movements that have since swept consciousness and created so much economic activity, even amid general recession. Only, the net effect, and net economy, is a vision far far removed from one I think anybody ever hoped to see. Who, for instance, following the anti trust trial against Microsoft (which riveted me, and I ended up reading the bulk of transcripts and depositions, which I am not sure one can even find online any more, but were a education themselves) ever imagined four - letter oligopoly was the next, potentially final, stage? Certainly, it is no longer as simple as "pick a license" ....

ninja edit: typos, minor clarity