So much software is “open source”, but it’s either de jure or de facto controlled by a single company.

Sure you could fork it, but for complex projects you’re not gonna. 99.99% of users of open source software will never meaningfully contribute. So the only option most people have is to hope someone else forks the project if something goes wrong, and for complex projects maintaining a fork requires serious resources.

We really need to distinguish between generic “open source” and actual community built and controlled projects.

The term open source itself was popularized by the open source initiative. A group funded by Tim O’Reilly and big tech to co-opt the free software movement and make it more business friendly.

They’ve spent so much time and money promoting the term, that there’s an enormous amount of good will around it. To the point that any project that doesn’t use an OSI approved license is widely considered dirty.

You could have a project controlled by the community with a nearly completely free license with the caveat that companies making more than $100 million in annual revenue can’t resell it, and the majority of devs would trust it less than an “open source” project completely controlled by a trillion dollar company.