[W]hat greatly affects a population's rate of innovation is its interconnectedness, in other words how widely ideas, information and tools are shared.[5] In a culture that is deeply interconnected, where information is widely shared, innovations are observable and shared tools and standards mean that innovations are also more likely to be compatible. Most importantly, interconnectedness provides each individual with a large pool of ideas from which they can select the most attractive to modify, recombine, extend and spread in turn.
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For every example of someone making a great outsized contribution (Bitcoin, Linux), aren't there thousands of examples of people starting small projects that never get finished or attain wide adoption? Also, aren't there many examples of private software projects becoming equally large and important (Microsoft, Google, etc)?
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by offering a competitive alternative to proprietary software (and importantly, an alternative which can never be bought out in a corporate takeover), FOSS helps prevent the vendors selling proprietary software from exploiting their users quite as much as they otherwise would.
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