Linux is no longer the product of “part-time hacking.” Most of the programmers who work on the project earn a good living for doing so, just as do those who work on proprietary software. The companies that sponsor and contribute to Linux do not do so out of the generosity of their hearts, they do so for solid commercial reasons.

Linux is no longer subversive. It has moved steadily away from being an outsider to taking its place as a comfortable part of the existing commercial world. In a way, if there was a revolution, Linux has won, but it’s an Animal Farm victory. In winning, Linux has become like those it displaced: more professional, more structured, more carefully governed. Linux has not undermined powerful institutions and companies (although it has made some operating systems obsolete); instead, those institutions have learned to live happily with Linux, and even profit from it.

The Web 2.0 platforms in the cultural industry have taken advantage of the winner-take-all tendencies of digital markets to take money from each and every transaction (by advertising or by direct sales) and have used their position, standing between the consumer and the service provider, to build enormous market power over service providers. The dispute is often presented as one between scrappy startups and big corporate incumbents (Airbnb versus chain hotels in particular) and yet history suggests that these big players will find a way to coexist. Instead, those who are more likely to be hit are the smaller bed and breakfasts and independent hotels. And the new entrants, those who have the promise of easy access to consumers dangled in front of them, may find that the platform they depend on takes the lion’s share of the money.

As an openness movement grows, the smart money learns how to work with it. Sometimes that smart money comes from those who seemed to be threatened: IBM was an establishment software company with its own operating system, which learned to love Linux, and the music industry learns to put ads on (and in) YouTube music videos. So businesses grow around the open commons.

Big companies are often better placed to influence the development of the movement than the amateurs who appear in the stories. Alliances with such companies (“Blockbuster strategies,” in Anita Elberse’s phrase) can be tempting for openness initiatives, and are often accompanied by a change in language. Visions of community are replaced by arguments that openness provides a better experience for consumers or is a more efficient production method. In the Open Data world, arguments for citizen engagement get put to one side in favor of arguments about new consumer services (Google Maps, real-estate listings); Linux’s goal of providing users with more control over their computing environment takes second place to powering Wall Street and the US security state.