> You can in theory just fork it and run your own version
That is not feasible for a large portion of users. Even seasoned developers would struggle to maintain a personal fork of anything but the simplest open-source software. Proprietary software also has an escape hatch, it's called "Voting with your wallet", i.e. giving your money to someone else who solves your problem better. The set of people who have money is much larger than the set of computer programmers.
Giving money to software you want to support has proven to be the most reliable way to direct software development. Granted, sometimes you're a Softimage user and Autodesk acquires the company making your software and then kills it to remove competition for their other 3D programs. Those cases are much rarer than the case where you want a consistently supported GUI for your OS and your only option is to write it yourself.
When you think about it, development of proprietary software is a lot more democratised than open-source software, because average users can direct where development goes by voting with their wallets, or even without their wallets in the case of piracy, which still drives development via second-order network effects. BitTorrent has done more for practical software freedom than GNU ever did.
That is not feasible for a large portion of users. Even seasoned developers would struggle to maintain a personal fork of anything but the simplest open-source software. Proprietary software also has an escape hatch, it's called "Voting with your wallet", i.e. giving your money to someone else who solves your problem better. The set of people who have money is much larger than the set of computer programmers.
Giving money to software you want to support has proven to be the most reliable way to direct software development. Granted, sometimes you're a Softimage user and Autodesk acquires the company making your software and then kills it to remove competition for their other 3D programs. Those cases are much rarer than the case where you want a consistently supported GUI for your OS and your only option is to write it yourself.
When you think about it, development of proprietary software is a lot more democratised than open-source software, because average users can direct where development goes by voting with their wallets, or even without their wallets in the case of piracy, which still drives development via second-order network effects. BitTorrent has done more for practical software freedom than GNU ever did.