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@cwebber @aral Aral's implicit point here (and explicitly... everywhere else) is that to consider this money as being "no strings attached" is a fallacy. The idea that these companies do a lot of taking and not enough giving presupposes that the giving they do isn't part-and-parcel with the taking in the first place (which, again, is Aral's overarching point here).
It seems shallowly utilitarian (if the calculus is even right) to say that multinational corporations with a parasitic business model are doing something good when they throw their weight around in free software.