> Terribly ungrateful of you, but okay, it's not a crime.

Companies are not people. It is nonsensical to say that someone is being grateful or ungrateful to some abstract legal construct.

If the executives of some company decide to let their employees work on open source projects, it's because they think this will improve profitability in some way: advertisement, attracting talent, benefiting from free work, facilitating adoption, etc.

Most of these companies benefit from open source way more than they contribute. Which is fine, but let's not assign human emotions to things that are not human. Being grateful to a corporation is the same as being grateful to your coffee machine for making coffee when you press the button.

I am very grateful to people who contribute to open source on their free time.