Business models and open source

It seems to me that Android also contains a lot of software which is free by common definitions. To my mind (perhaps I am prejudiced, I work on VirtualBox), having software projects which mix free and non-free software is better than not having projects containing free software, and if the non-free parts make it financially feasible to create the free parts which would otherwise not have been created that seems acceptable to me. Perhaps it would have been possible to make it work without the non-free parts, but if the people involved did not know how that does not really help. Perhaps the partially free software prevented something fully free from being created because it was good enough. I doubt that is often the case but can't prove it.

I suppose in the end whether a free and non-free mix is better than nothing at all will depend on the point of view of the person deciding. I like free software, but I don't see it as a moral goal in itself, though I do see it as a potentially useful tool for achieving other moral goals. Other people may (and probably do) disagree.