FOSS absolutely does have an effect on how your movement is organized and if you depend on it it can be an accelerator.
But FOSS doesn't create some kind of socialist utopia as some people seem to believe. It does something much more mundane yet infinitely more valuable in our fractured modern world: it unites bitter enemies and gets them to collaborate.
Look at the contributors to the Linux kernel, which even includes Microsoft now. It's hard to imagine any other force which could unite all those people and businesses under a common cause. But thanks to the GPL, even as their wars with each other continue they are all contributing resources to the public good.
It's so popular these days to flame and dehumanize the other side of any debate but all that does is destroy. FOSS builds and extends humanity's common heritage. It won't win the war for you but it will redirect your energies into creation and ensure that you leave something good behind.
"Bitter enemies" work together all the time without open source. Competing companies partner on initiatives, join the same boards, help each other pass new standards. Companies do not have emotions. They have profits and losses, marketing, products, coalitions, industry associations, etc. They are fine with working with competitors if it has no downside. Often they have to work with competitors, if only because their parent conglomerates are so large that they each depend on some product or service the other provides, or their customers use some product of the customer's and supporting it keeps their customers around. It's just part of doing business.
There is no magic to FOSS. It's just a weird quirk in the global capitalist market. It has no real bearing on business, unless your business is catering to the tiny minority of people who care only about FOSS.
Thank you for writing this out, I never worded it like this to myself but it makes so much sense.
I love the FOSS movement's use of the legal system, mixed with ease of adoption, to force big players to contribute.
FOSS, while not being a socialist utopia, is one of the few truly cooperative systems in our society, and it also goes to show you cannot trust people(corporations) to contribute out of the good of their heart, you have to force their hand through the very tools(ip law) that these people and corporations use to wield their own power.
This may stray past your original point, but whenever I hear someone complain about something being "authoritarian", I find it hard to take seriously because the profit motive almost always goes against a general common good. ie covid lockdowns, lives saved vs dollars earned, where do your priorities lie?
But FOSS doesn't create some kind of socialist utopia as some people seem to believe. It does something much more mundane yet infinitely more valuable in our fractured modern world: it unites bitter enemies and gets them to collaborate.
Look at the contributors to the Linux kernel, which even includes Microsoft now. It's hard to imagine any other force which could unite all those people and businesses under a common cause. But thanks to the GPL, even as their wars with each other continue they are all contributing resources to the public good.
It's so popular these days to flame and dehumanize the other side of any debate but all that does is destroy. FOSS builds and extends humanity's common heritage. It won't win the war for you but it will redirect your energies into creation and ensure that you leave something good behind.