Every time you push code to GitHub for free, Microsoft makes money.
Every React component you build, Meta profits.
Every TensorFlow model you train, Google cashes in.
You're not a developer - you're an unpaid employee of Big Tech 🧵
The numbers are staggering.
Recreating all existing open source software would cost $8.8 trillion.
Yet who maintains it?
Mostly unpaid volunteers working nights and weekends.
Meanwhile, Google pulls $200+ billion annually built on Linux, TensorFlow, and thousands of free projects.
Here's the con: 70% of open source contributions come from individuals and volunteers.
Big Tech contributes strategically - just enough to control direction, never enough to match what they extract.
They're not partners. They're parasites with billion-dollar PR budgets.
React powers millions of apps.
Built by community, controlled by Meta.
Kubernetes runs the cloud economy - billions for AWS and Azure.
GitHub Copilot?
Trained on your free code, sold back to you for $10/month.
They're literally monetizing your unpaid work.
The patent trap is worse.
Companies file thousands of software patents on open source derivatives.
NVIDIA patents OSS-published software.
OpenAI stopped open-sourcing after GPT-2, then patents the tech.
They take your free work, lock it up, charge you to use it.
Meet the victims: "My open source code is worth millions, but I live paycheck to paycheck."
Maintainers burn out, quit, leave critical infrastructure vulnerable.
Remember Log4j?
One unpaid developer's library nearly broke the internet when hackers exploited it.
The H1B scam makes it worse.
Big Tech uses open source to suppress wages, replacing American developers with cheaper labor.
"Why pay $150k when someone in Bangalore will contribute for free?"
It's wage theft disguised as globalization.
GitHub Copilot is the smoking gun.
Microsoft trained it on billions of lines of code without paying creators a cent.
Now they sell AI generated from YOUR work back to YOU.
It's digital colonialism - extract resources, sell refined products.
OpenAI's the worst offender.
ChatGPT trained on uncompensated data from millions of creators.
Kenyan workers earn $1-2/hour labeling data.
External testers work unpaid.
A $150 billion company built on free labor from the global south.
The "open source AI" lie is their latest con.
Meta pushes "open" models while patenting key components.
Zuckerberg says it's "good for developers" while Meta dominates.
DeepSeek from China just exposed how fake Western "openness" really is.
They've turned Richard Stallman's liberation movement into corporate feudalism.
What started as empowering users against monopolies now CREATES monopolies.
Big Tech harvests community innovation, plants patent walls, charges rent on digital sharecropping.
The AI disruption proves it works.
While millions contributed free training data and code, a handful of companies worth trillions emerged.
Your tweets trained their models.
Your GitHub repos built their empires.
Your free labor created their monopolies.
Time for a reckoning. Demand fair compensation.
Use restrictive licenses. Build worker cooperatives.
Or watch the next generation of developers burn out building Big Tech's empire for free.
The code was open - until they slammed the vault door shut.
I’m Shawn, a Generative AI Consultant passionate about building AI-driven solutions.
I write about AI, startups, and the future of work.
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