>My point is that innovation has to be paid for in the end,
As open source software development has become more complex, software configuration management tools became increasingly outdated, and now we have two CM tools using the distributed CM approach: git and Mercurial, both developed as open source products. Proprietary CM tools have not been able to keep up, and these tools will transform the way software is developed in the 21st Century.
Sure, somebody paid the people who developed these CM tools, but the innovation was not directed by the payer. That is why Google has a policy of engineers devoting 20% of their paid time to developing their own innovations.