Seems like a spurious argument
The Linux kernel is just a kernel. It's not any use by itself without everything else that is needed for an operating system. Most of the top contributors to the Linux kernel are companies with deep pockets, not beardies sitting in a bedroom with their cups of cold coffee, eeking out a living. No, they are people like Poettering, employed by Microsoft.
There's a lot of not-very-good open source apps out there as well as good ones. Gimp and Inkscape have some of the ugliest GUIs " out there. VLC likewise has a "shove it all in settings and let them find it" attitude to GUI design.
The author seems to be missing a point, as shown in this snippet: "The irony of this is that both Google and Meta are successful parts of the FOSS ecosystem... So how come the companies' branded goods don't reflect that?" Software, whether open source or closed, is just a collection of tools. I can use a hammer and chisel to turn raw stone into a sculpture or I can use it them to smash something to pieces. Open source software has no inherent more-moral feature than closed-source software. It's ludicrous to suggest otherwise.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
