This is impossible to know. Not that long ago something like Linux would have sounded like a madman's dream to someone with your perspective. It turns out great innovations happen outside the capitalist for-profit context and denying that is very questionable. If anything, those kinds of setups often hinder innovation. How much better would linux be if it was mired in endless licensing agreements, per monthly rates, had a board full of fortune 500 types, and billed each user a patent fee? Or any form of profit incentive 'business logic'?

If that stuff worked better, linux would have failed entirely, instead near everyone interfaces with a linux machine probably hundreds if not thousands of times a day in some form. Maybe millions if we consider how complex just accessing internet services is and the many servers, routers, mirrors, proxies, etc one encounters in just a trivial app refresh. If not linux, then the open mach/bsd derivatives ios uses.

Then looking even previous to the ascent of linux, we had all manner of free/open stuff informally in the 70s and 80s. Shareware, open culture, etc that led to today where this entire medium only exists because of open standards and open source and volunteering.

Software patents are net loss for society. For profit systems are less efficient than open non-profit systems. No 'middle-man' system is better than a system that goes out of its way to eliminate the middle-man rent-seeker.